When We're All That We Have Left, Yet We Aim To Kill
by ToFindAFeelingThatWillHold
Summary: Elyza Lex/Alicia Clark FTWD AU - Elyza Lex is on the run after her safe house (the one Chris saw flashing lights at him) was raided by the military. Hoping to find some refuge from the horde of walkers chasing her, she throws herself out into the ocean and nearly drowns. Lucky for her, the beautiful and headstrong Alicia Clark spots her and becomes determined to save her.
1. Chapter 1

Bare feet hit the ground at a sprint as Elyza tore through the deserted city streets in the early morning light. There were a few walkers scattered throughout the alleyways that she passed, and she knew that they would soon join the group that was already following her, drawn to the loud noises they were making in her pursuit. Her breathing came out in hard but steady breaths as she ran. She could see the expanse of the ocean ahead of her and the rocky cliff face that separated her from the safety that it harbored. She quickly considered her options. She knew it would be dangerous, but she also knew that risks were necessary in order to survive - her instincts demanded bravery.

With a burst of strength, she launched herself over the edge of the rocky bank. Her stomach flew up into her throat as the ground dropped out from under her and gravity pulled her down. The sand felt more like cement when she landed, her feet smashing into the granular surface. Her left ankle rolled sickeningly, causing her to audibly wince, but she pushed forward, hell-bent on reaching the water.

She limped heavily as she fought her way through the icy ocean waves that crashed around her. She barely noticed the way the salty water splashed up to sting at her eyes and sear the scrapes that decorated her skin. Her heart pounded in her chest as it pumped adrenaline through her entire system, igniting every cell in her body. The only thought in her mind was to survive. If she could just get out past the surf break, the horde of walkers following her wouldn't be able reach her.

She heard groans and hissing and splashing behind her and knew that they were too close. Forcefully, she threw herself headfirst into the crest of a breaking wave. She fought helplessly against the current as the force of it pushed her back toward the shore, and her right foot came into contact with something solid. She knew what it was. Fear spiked in her core and she kicked frantically, ignoring the sharp pain that shot through her left foot. With one, desperate push, she launched herself off of the walker's body just as the undertow began to pull her back out. She felt it's dead fingers scrape across her foot, and then she was free.

She kept up her frantic kicking under the water until her lungs felt like they were about to burst. She came up for air, spluttering and gasping for breath. Looking back at the shore, she saw what looked like a group of nearly fifteen walkers wading through the rough water. Relief washed through her like the ocean itself as she watched them get thrown by the crashing swells, unable to break through the waves.

With one hand, she reached up and pushed a few strands of wet, blonde hair out of her face and tried to take a deep breath to steady herself. She began to swim further out from the shore, but stopped almost immediately as the excruciating pain in her ankle flared up, causing her to clench her jaw and grimace. It was impossible to ignore now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

She looked up and down the shoreline, scanning it for any signs of obvious life. A few walkers were scattered along the beach, slowly making their way toward the horde that had been chasing her. She didn't see any people. There was no one running, no one carrying weapons or tools, no one walking with purpose and cautiously glancing over their shoulder - there were no signs of the living.

She sighed and let her head fall back slightly as her stomach dropped in disappointment. It was quickly followed by anger, though, as she thought about the way that her safe house had been raided during the night. She had been living in a large house on a hill that she and a group of eleven other people had transformed into their very own, fortified camp. They had been residing there for months, sheltered from the chaos of the streets outside, surviving together, before they were attacked, not by walkers, but by the fucking military.

She allowed herself only a moment to worry about her friends before she pushed it all down and forced herself to focus. She needed to make a plan. She needed to survive.

She scanned the shore again, looking for a safe place to swim back to land. Finding nothing promising, she turned in a full circle, taking in the endless expanse of the ocean on the western horizon. She did a double take, noticing a black dot about twenty degrees off the shoreline to the north, and felt a spark of hope flicker in her chest. If it were a boat, she could rest there and take some time to come up with a real plan to get back to shore and find her people. Determined, she knit her brows together and began to swim, using only her arms and her uninjured leg to propel herself forward.

* * *

"I could get use to this," Alycia said with a sigh as she smiled up at the clear blue sky, letting the warmth of the sun seep through her skin and warm her to her core. She was sprawled out on the deck of Victor's enormous luxury yacht with sunglasses on and the steady rhythm of music streaming though a single earbud in her right ear. The sun was warm on her skin, and for the first time in what felt like years, she was almost able to pretend that the world hadn't broken to pieces and collapsed into rubble around her.

"I'd rather not." Chris's voice shattered her reverie. She hadn't realized she wasn't alone. It irked her enough for a scowl to cross her lips.

"Buzz kill," she grumbled.

She sat up and looked at him, pushing her sunglasses up to rest on top of her head. He was facing away from her, leaning against the railing of the deck with one of his elbows propped up on it as he held his video camera out in front of him. He never went anywhere without that thing.

"What are you doing?" She asked, not caring enough to hide her annoyance.

"Documenting," he told her.

Alicia stood up with an exasperated sigh and walked over to him. Reaching for the camera, Chris tentatively let her take it out of his hands. She slid her fingers through the strap and hit the record button.

"What's the point?" She asked him, genuinely curious. She truly did not see the point of it. "Technology is failing. Even if someone were to find your camera in the bound-to-be-shitty, post-apocalyptic future, they wouldn't have anything to play your videos on. So what's the point?"

"What makes you think I do it for anyone else?" He countered, and his response took Alicia by surprise. She turned to look at him with confusion clearly written on her face. Brows knit together, she lifted her chin slightly and she waited for him to elaborate; she knew it was a rhetorical question.

"Look," he went on, "if someone does find this in the future and there's even a sliver of a chance that they'll find some way to play my videos, then it's all worth it. A first hand account of how the apocalypse went down could be invaluable. I don't need to explain that to you - I know you know that - but even if I knew for a fact that there was no chance that anyone else would ever watch these, I would still do it. I'd do it for myself. Talking things out in front of the camera, documenting my experiences and describing all of this crazy, senseless shit- it's the only way that I can know that it's real - that this world isn't just some never-ending nightmare that I could eventually wake up from. It's the only way that I can process any of it."

He released a long breath and let his shoulders slump forward, becoming the perfect picture of exhaustion. She could see it in his countenance and in his posture and she could hear it in his words, and she understood. She was exhausted too; they all were - physically and mentally.

"Hell," he went on after a moment, voice tight as if he had to force the words out of his throat. "I still can't process it. I mean… my mom… I just- I can't-"

He choked on his words and reached a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose before turning away from Alicia and the camera. Both of his elbows rested on the balcony and his face was pressed into his open palms, hiding his eyes.

Alicia reached up and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. She didn't say anything because there was nothing to say. Shit happened and life sucked, and there was nothing fair about it.

They stayed that way for a long time, with no sounds but those of the ocean beneath them. It must've been at least fifteen minutes before Alicia realized that the camera was still in her hands and it was still recording. She pulled it up in front of her face and zoomed in to the shore, taking in the crumbling landscape of the city that she use to call home. It broke her heart to see it like this - torn apart and dead.

Suddenly, something off of the shore caught her eye and she inhaled sharply.

"Chris, look at this," she said, hitting him on the shoulder and making him scowl at her.

"What?" He leaned over to look at the camera. Alicia zoomed in closer and glanced at him. She watched as his eyes practically doubled in size.

"Is that one of them?" He asked, and she could hear the fear beneath his words.

"I don't think so," she said. "I'm pretty sure the dead can't swim."

He nodded silently and visibly swallowed.

"We need to tell the others. Go get my dad," he told her, throwing her a quick glance.

Despite her displeasure at being told what to do, she hurried towards the cabin doors.

"Mom!" She called out loudly as soon as she entered the room. "Travis!"

"Woah, why are you yelling?"

Nick squinted up at her from where he was laying, sprawled out on a sofa. He looked as miserable as a stoner in withdrawal, which wasn't surprising since that's exactly what he was.

"Where's mom?" She snapped, ignoring his question and moving past him.

"Lower deck," came a nonchalant voice to her left. Alicia glanced over and saw Victor standing by the bar, casually sipping a drink that he had poured for himself.

"Seriously, what's going on?" Nick asked, sitting up and rubbing a hand over one of his eyes.

"We found someone," she shot at him over her shoulder before running down a flight of stairs.

"Interesting," she heard Victor say curiously as she reached the bottom of the stairs, quickly followed by Nick's loud exclamation of, "What?"

She chose to ignore them both, but heard their footsteps above her, most likely heading out to the deck to see for themselves.

"Mom!" She called out again, as loudly as she could.

"Alicia?" A muffled voice came from behind a closed door. It swung open a moment later and Travis stepped out, shirt unbuttoned and hair ruffled, closely followed by her mother. Both looked concerned.

"Oh god, seriously?" Alicia cringed both inwardly and outwardly as she realized what they must've been doing in the privacy of their bedroom.

"What's wrong?" Travis asked.

"There's someone in the water," she told them, wasting no time. "I saw them through Chris's camera up on the top deck."

The look on both of their faces shifted quickly from concern to surprise.

"Show me," Travis said, moving past her quickly and hurrying up the stairs.

"It's not a…" Madison let her question trail off, "is it?"

"No, Mom. We're safe here," Alicia reassured her. "Whoever it is, they're definitely alive, and we need to help them."

* * *

Exhaustion weighed down on every bone in Elyza's body, like lead weights dragging her down beneath the surface of the water. Her injuries were hitting her full force, and the pain of them had her teetering on the edge of consciousness. She fought with every ounce of her strength to stay awake, to stay above water, to stay alive, but she was failing. Her vision was narrowing, black seeping in around the edges and threatening to eclipse her. Salt water burned in her lungs, making her cough violently, which only caused more of the searing liquid to force its way in.

She wasn't naive - she knew that the thing she felt slowly consuming her was the onset of death - but she kept up her futile fight with unwavering determination.

Something firm suddenly tightened around her upper arm and tugged at her. She barely registered what was happening as her head broke the surface of the water and she fought to breathe.

"Grab her other arm!" A voice shouted out.

Her vision was blurry and fading fast, and just as she felt something grasp her other arm, a rolling wave came up around her face. She coughed in an impossibly large breath of ocean water that flooded her lungs, and everything went black.

* * *

Alicia, Nick and Chris stood side-by-side, each one pressed up against the railing on the upper deck of the yacht. All three of them were staring anxiously at the small screen of the camera, watching the adults pull a body into the small, inflatable boat. They strained their eyes, trying their best to make out more of what was happening, but it was too far away for the little camera to show anything in detail.

Alicia let out an irritated sigh. She was still sufficiently annoyed about not being allowed to go out in the boat with her mother, Travis and Victor, especially since she was the first one to catch the 'man overboard'.

"I can barely see anything on that screen," she told her brothers, turning away from the camera in Chris's hand. "I'm going back down to wait for them on the lower deck."

She barely had to wait five minutes until the boat was within hearing distance. She heard her brothers' footsteps thumping down the stairs behind her, but didn't turn to look at them.

"Tie us up," Victor called out to them, throwing a rope out to Nick as the boat bumped up against the side of the yacht. Chris reached out and grabbed the other rope at the boat's bow, steadying it enough for the three adults to step out onto the deck.

Travis crouched down, and when he stood back up, he had a girl in his arms. Her blond hair stuck to the sides of her face and fell down behind her, soaking wet and dripping icy sea water. Her clothes were waterlogged, and clung to her tightly. She looked like she'd been through hell. She had deep scrapes on her cheek and chin and cuts scattered across all of the visible parts of her skin. The worst of her injuries, by far, was the girl's left ankle. It was swollen to the size of a softball and covered in an angry-looking, multi-colored bruise. The sight of it made her cringe in sympathy.

Travis stepped off the boat and moved towards the stairs that led to the cabin. Nick ran up ahead of him and held the door open.

"Is she-?"

"She's alive," Madison cut off his question, "just unconscious. We need to warm her up. Alicia, will you go find something dry for her to wear? She looks about the same size as you."

"Yeah, sure." Alicia hurried off towards her room and grabbed a pair of purple sweatpants, a simple white t-shirt, and a fuzzy gray sweater, along with some underwear and fleece socks. They were the warmest clothes she had with her.

She walked out into the cabin and found everyone crowded around the unconscious girl who was laying on top of a light gray sectional. She could hear them whispering under their breath.

"Are you sure she isn't infected?" One of them asked.

"No, we'll have to check her out for bite marks," her mother's voice answered.

"And what if she is?"

"Then we can't let her stay here," Travis whispered back.

"We can't just throw her back out into the ocean."

"We can't risk any of us getting sick. You know that."

"So what, you would be okay with just leaving her to die?"

"Well wh-"

"How about we give her some air," Alicia suggested hotly, not bothering to lower her voice and effectively cutting off the discussion. She walked up to her mother and handed Madison the pile of clothes.

"You're right," her mom agreed, turning to Travis. "Why don't you go up and wait for us on the upper deck while we get her changed."

Travis nodded.

"Don't forget to check for bite marks," he reminded her before turning to leave. "Everybody out, let's go."

He ushered everyone out of the lower cabin with him, but when Alicia moved to follow, her mom stopped her quickly with a hand on her arm.

"I'm going to need your help," Madison said as Alicia turned back towards her. She put the pile of clothes down on the side table and bent over the unconscious girl. "Help me get her out of these wet clothes?"

"Oh," Alicia said, hesitantly. "Okay."

She walked back and bent over the girl beside her mother. It took both of them working together to peel off her skin-tight black jeans, and Alicia was grateful that the girl was unconscious as she squeezed her swollen ankle through the fabric.

She let her mom take off the blonde's underwear, feeling uneasy about seeing the girl naked without her permission. She reached for her shoulders and pulled her up into a sitting position in an effort to get her out of her leather jacket. The material was stiff and inflexible, which made things difficult, but she eventually managed to free her of it.

After tossing the jacket aside, she reached for the hem of her shirt and hiked it up her stomach, revealing another deep purple bruise painted across her ribs. She ran her fingers over it delicately before taking one arm at a time and pushing them through the shirt sleeves. Alicia breath caught in her throat and she blushed a deep shade of red when the girl's second arm was freed and she realized that the blonde wasn't wearing a bra. She blinked rapidly and tried to look anywhere but at the girl's chest. Her eyes flashed over soft looking skin marred with wounds in various stages of the healing process. She had to fight back the urge to reach out and touch her injuries - to soothe them. It surprised her to no end. She wasn't one to care about strangers she'd never met, but for whatever reason, Alicia really didn't like seeing this particular girl hurt.

Clearing her throat, she pulled at the girls shoulders and sat her up again in order to slip the wet shirt up over her head. The close proximity made her heart race. As she reached around the girl, she noticed the curving lines of a looping tattoo on the back of her neck. Alicia's eyes grew wide at the sight of the infinity sign - the same symbol that she always found herself sketching in the margins of her notebooks during class. She wanted nothing more than to take the time to look at it, to trace it, but she knew that she couldn't - that she _shouldn't._ So instead, she grabbed the dry shirt beside her and quickly fit the girl into it.

Foregoing the sweater, she lay the girl back down and reached up to brush a few stray strands of hair out of her eyes. She ran her fingers down to the very ends of her damp, blonde hair and rolled it between her fingers. Even wet, she could tell that her hair was a beautiful shade of champagne gold.

When she looked back up at the girl's face, Alicia gasped, her jaw dropping slightly in shock. Blurry eyes blinked up at her, as blue as the sky above them and as bright as the summer sun. They held her for a moment and then a smirk spread across the blonde's lips. All Alicia could do was stare at her, stunned. She was completely at the mercy of those eyes and that smirk, trapped like a prisoner in her gaze. Then the girl spoke with a voice as coarse as gravel after nearly drowning.

"You were right," she coughed.

That was all she said before she blinked her glassy eyes a few more times and seemingly fell back into unconsciousness.

"Did she just say something?" Madison asked loudly, obviously surprised as well. "Is she awake?"

Alicia mouth went dry, but she forced herself to swallow down the knot that had built up in her throat.

"She's Australian," was all she could think to say.

"What?" Her mother asked, confused. "Alicia, what did she say?"

It took a moment for Alicia to collect herself enough to respond.

"It was nothing, Mom. She wasn't making any sense," she told her, finally tearing her eyes off of the blonde to turn towards her mother and throw her an exasperated look. "All she said was 'you were right' and then passed out again. She was probably just hallucinating."

"Hmm," was all that Madison said in response. The woman stood up and walked around to the other side of Alicia, near the blonde's head.

"Did you see any bite marks?" Her mom asked.

"No, just a lot of cuts and bruises. You?"

"Same."

There was silence for a moment as they both stared at the girl with identical looks of curiosity and confusion.

"What do you think happened to her, Mom?"

"I don't know, but we're going to find out as soon as she wakes up. Help me get her into a bed?"

Alicia nodded. "She can take mine. I'll wait in there until she's conscious again."

"Okay," Madison agreed. "I'll get her arms and you get her legs."

Alicia moved down to the girls thighs and slid her hands under her legs. Together, the women lifted the girl and carried her down the hall and through the door to Alicia's room. They gently laid her down on the bed and shifted her into the center of it before covering her with a soft blanket.

"Alright hun, come get us when she wakes up. Understand?"

Alicia nodded, walking over to the shelf by the bed and scanning the few books that were stacked there. She smiled with satisfaction as she found _The Giver_ and quickly pulled it out and ruffled through its pages.

"I mean it, Alicia. As soon as she's awake, you need to tell us."

"Okay, Mom, I get it," she said, waving her mother out of the room with irritation.

As soon as the door closed, Alicia collapsed into the chair by the bed and stared at the blonde-haired girl who was asleep in her bed. She completely forgot about the book in her hand as her mind filled with the image of those beautiful, blue eyes and that devilish smirk.

" _Australian…"_ she said to absent-mindedly, completely oblivious to the way she was smiling to herself at the memory of the girl's words. "How the hell did you end up here?"

* * *

 **A/N: This is my first attempt at writing fanfiction, so go easy on me. I couldn't help but jump on the Elyza Lex bandwagon after we lost Lexa in episode 7 of The 100 :'(. I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction though, and I think there's a lot of potential for some really awesome stories in this crossover universe. If I don't get much of a response to this, I might not continue it, so let me know if you want me to keep going. Feel free to message me on tumblr if you have any suggestions or questions or anything else. url: searching4thesun**


	2. Chapter 2

_The white noise of jet turbines filled Elyza's ears as she leaned her head against the window of the plane and stared down at the clouds below her. She'd only ever flown a handful of times in her life, and she wasn't particularly fond of it - being stuck in enclosed spaces for long periods of time wasn't really her favorite thing - but she had always felt oddly at home in the sky. She couldn't say why - maybe it was the moments of weightlessness that made her feel like all of her burdens were being lifted off her shoulders for a few seconds at a time; or maybe it was the way she could literally place forty thousand feet of distance between herself and her life and her problems._

 _This flight was different, though. This day was different. Things were changing. She could practically feel the natural disposition of civilization shifting beneath her as news about the epidemic swept through the streets and panic ensued._

 _The man across the isle from her coughed again and she could see the people in front of her practically jumping out of their seats. Nervous heads turned his way, and Elyza couldn't help but glance at the man herself. The sight of him did nothing to ease her own discomfort. His skin was pasty-white and gleamed with a sheen of sweat._

He could be infected, _she thought to herself, and she knew that those were the same words that occupied the minds of everyone else on the plane who was within hearing distance of the sick man._

" _Relax, Princess."_

 _The voice came from the young man sitting next to her. Tom Finn, he said his name was. He looked more like a boy than a man. If she were to guess, she'd say he was probably in his late teens to early twenties - most likely around the same age as Elyza herself. He had been insufferable for the duration of the flight, forcing her to endure some of the worst jokes she'd ever heard as well as his pitiful attempts at flirting. And then, to top it all off, he gave her that stupid nickname that she bloody_ loathed _after laughing at her drink order - some cranberry juice watered down just a splash with no ice._

 _She hadn't actually realized how tense her muscles really were until he told her to relax though, so she tried her best to loosen up her posture, rolling her eyes at him before turning to stare back out the window._

" _Don't worry, it's only going to be another few minutes before we start to land, and you'll be on the ground and back in the arms of your boyfriend before you know it."_

 _She let out a huff of a laugh in response_

" _What, no boyfriend?" He asked, trying to sound playful._

" _That's not really my thing," she told him, keeping her eyes focused on the world outside the window._

 _Amusement pulled at the corner of her lips when a long pause stretched out between them, and she knew that Tom was trying to process what she had just said._

" _So…. what? You don't like guys?" He asked hesitantly._

" _I have a weakness for soft skin and long legs and beautiful smiles."_

 _She let her words linger in the air for a second before she turned to look at him, brows raised. He looked back at her with a big, toothy smile._

" _Well me too," he said and then laughed. Part of her wanted to stare him down and make him sweat, but she couldn't hold back the chuckle that built up in the back of her throat._

" _Look, I'm sorry," he said, his goofy grin never faltering as he shook his head. "If I had known… well, I definitely would've lightened up on the flirting."_

 _Elyza watched him duck his head slightly, lowering his gaze as his smile turned sheepish. As insufferable as he had been, the boy looked surprisingly genuine, and she couldn't help but find it somewhat endearing, though she would never admit it._

" _No worries, mate," she told him with a laugh. "You could really do with some work on your flirting game, though."_

" _You got some pointers for me, Princess?" He said laughing, earning himself a scowl from the blonde._

 _Just as she was about to snap back a witty retort, she felt the plane drop into it's final descent. The man across the isle broke out in a fit of coughs a second later and it lasted nearly half a minute before the noise subsided into a loud wheeze._

" _He does_ not _look good," Elyza said, eyeing the man cautiously._

 _Tom made a sound of agreement in the back of his throat as he watch the man as well._

" _Good thing we'll be landing soon," he said, turning back to face her, and they both silently wished that soon would come sooner._

" _Are you staying in LA or heading downunder?" He asked, smiling again and trying to ease the tension._

" _Back to Melbourne for me. If they can get the plane off the ground, that is. With everything going to shit, I'm starting to worry they might shut down the airports."_

" _Oh yeah, I didn't even think about that," Tom said. "I'm glad I don't have anywhere else to be."_

" _Lucky you," Elyza quipped._

" _So what, were you just visiting the states?"_

" _No," she told him, "I'm in uni outside of D.C."_

" _Oh cool, are you on spring break or something?"_

" _No, our break isn't until mid-March, but I got a call from my mum a few days ago saying that she heard about the epidemic and wanted me to come back early, so she booked me a last-minute flight home."_

" _Well that's sweet," he said, smiling at her. "At least you've got someone looking out for you."_

 _He said it in a way that made it obvious to Elyza that he didn't have the same thing, which made her eyes drop slightly in sympathy. She couldn't think of what to say to him, but was saved the effort when the man across the isle started convulsing in his seat._

 _The woman sitting beside him shrieked and pressed her back against the window in an effort to stay as far away from him as possible. The man slumped forward, his convulsions so strong that he slid out of his seat and collapsed on the floor. Gasps and exclamations echoed around her, but Elyza barely noticed as she sprang into action. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she practically jumped over Tom to reach the seat beside him._

" _He's seizing!" She called out to no one in particular. Pushing against one of the man's shoulders, she quickly rolled him onto his side and held him there. He was foaming at the mouth, head smacking against the ground with every jolting movement._

 _It must've lasted over a minute, and when the convulsions finally ceased, the man didn't move or open his eyes. Elyza's stomach flew into her throat as the nose of the plane bowed down into a steeper descent and the cabin went weightless for another moment. Although she normally enjoyed the sensation, this time it only added sickeningly to the anxiety that had knotted in the pit of her stomach._

 _She looked down at the unmoving man and quickly pressed two fingers to his pulse point. Feeling nothing, she moved her fingers slightly and pressed more firmly. When she still couldn't find any signs of a pulse, she reached down to grab at his wrist and tried one more time. Failing, she looked up at Tom and held his gaze for a moment, his eyes wide with shock and fear, before shaking her head nearly imperceptibly._

 _She let go of the shoulder she was bracing and the dead man rolled onto his back, laying flat against the airplane floor in front of her. She had no idea what to do. She didn't even know if she could move. She felt as if she had been frozen, kneeling in the isle, staring at the closed, dead eyelids of another person that she couldn't save. Her eyes began to sting and her thundering heart clenched in her chest._

 _She could feel the eyes of everyone on the plane staring at her, but she didn't look up. She stay as still as if she were carved out of marble, unable to tear her eyes away from her failure, but then she jumped in surprise, gasping loudly enough for the sound to ring in her ears. Pasty white eyelids snapped open and glowing blue eyes pierced blindingly up into her own. Fear shot straight through Elyza like a bolt of lightning to her chest. A groan came from the body and the man shifted as if he were about to stand up._

" _Oh shit," Elyza said, jumping to her feet as the undead man braced his legs beneath him and rose up, reaching out for her._

 _At the sound of her voice, he hissed and lunged forward. Elyza barely managed to get her hands up in time to keep the man at arms length as he bared his teeth and snarled. Screams filled the cabin on the plane as she fought him off. Somehow, she managed to get in a good shove, and when the growling man stumbled backward, Elyza stepped forward and punched him squarely in the jaw with so much force that she felt it crack beneath her fist. The dead man spun around but caught himself on a seat a few rows back._

 _A middle-aged woman sat alone in the row next to where the dead man fell, and when he turned his face towards her, the woman's eyes doubled in size at the sight of his crooked, broken jaw and unnaturally glowing eyes. She let out an ear-splitting scream, fully catching the attention of the dead guy who lunged toward her and this time managed to sink his teeth into the throat of his victim._

 _Blood spewed out onto the seats in front of them as the flesh was literally ripped from the woman's neck._

 _Elyza didn't have time to think - she only acted. She threw herself back into her seat, reaching for her backpack below it. She rifled through it until her fingers came into contact with a heavy metal object and she let out a sigh of relief, silently thanking herself for nearly forgetting her maglite and throwing it into her pack at the last minute. The flashlight was heavy in her hands, the grip about the same size as the handle of a tennis racket, and it was more than capable of doing some real damage._

" _Bloody hell," she cursed under her breath, bruised knuckles throbbing as she gripped it tightly._

 _She rushed back out into the isle and ran toward the row where she knew the dead man still was. The woman lay limply beneath him on the seat with blood pooling around her body as the man gnawed at her cheek, tearing off slabs of skin and grunting loudly. The sight made Elyza's stomach roll._

 _In one strong, fluid movement, Elyza whipped the maglite down across dead man's shoulder, effectively shattering his collarbone. His head snapped around and he snarled at her through his fractured jaw, and it was almost as if he didn't feel his injuries. The dead man didn't hesitate for a second. He reached out with the arm attached to the destroyed collarbone, and Elyza gaped at the sight, absolutely stunned, but shook it off quickly when he stood up and moved towards her._

 _She ducked beneath his arms as he lunged at her and smashed the metal flashlight into the side of his body. She took a few steps back as he crashed against the seats beside him, but caught his balance and relentless moved forward in her direction once again. Splintered ribs speared through the side of dead man's chest, dripping crimson and staining his beige shirt with blood._

 _He lunged for her again, but she was ready for it this time. She ducked once more, cracking the metal instrument across his shin, snapping both of the bones in his leg._

 _The dead man crumpled beneath his own weight as his limb failed to hold him up. Elyza stepped back and watched, trying to gauge what the dead guy was going to do next._

" _What the bloody hell?" She exclaimed as the dead man rose once more, hobbling forward on his mangled leg. She was exasperated and pissed off and scared out of her skin, though she was doing her best not to let it show._

 _She didn't wait for the guy to attack this time, taking the offensive instead. Eliza smashed her maglite into the side of his face, sending him flying to the ground. When he hit the floor, she lunged forward and pinned him down before crushing the flashlight down into his skull. She felt the bone crunch beneath the force of it, knowing that it was a death blow, but she didn't stop. She hit him just as hard, three more times in quick succession before pausing to make sure he wasn't moving or making any sound._

 _Satisfied it was over, she looked up and for the first time, she seemed to notice the chaos that was breaking out around her. The plane lurched beneath her and a hand reached out and grasped her upper arm. She whipped her head around, readying herself in case it was another attack, but she only found Tom with big eyes and panic written all over his face._

" _Come on, Princess!" He called out to her, yanking at her arm until she stood up. The plane rocked formidably, causing them both to stumble as he dragged Elyza back multiple rows and into two empty seats near an emergency exit._

" _Something's wrong with the plane!" He shouted to her over the noise. "I don't think we're gonna have the smoothest landing!"_

 _Glancing out the window, she saw the ground no more than a mile below them. Quickly, she reached for her seatbelt and buckled herself in._

" _Tom!" She yelled to him, noticing his seatbelt wasn't fastened. "You need to buckle up!"_

" _Where's the fun in that?" He called back sarcastically, holding up one end of the seatbelt with a buckle that had somehow been shattered._

 _Elyza's eyes widened in fear as she focused in on the window behind Tom. She could see the tops of trees only feet below them. The ear-splitting noise of metal tearing apart splintered her eardrums, and then everything went black._

* * *

With a sharp gasp, Elyza sat up and blinked rapidly. Her heart pounded like Thor's massive hammer inside her chest as it tried to break its way out of her ribcage.

"Hey, it's okay," a gentle voice spoke somewhere off to her right, and then a hand brushed her arm. "It's okay. Everything's okay. You're safe. Just breathe."

Elyza brought her hands up to her stinging eyes, rubbing her palms over them and trying wipe the blurriness away. She took a deep breath to steady herself but winced when a sharp pain pierced the side of her chest. She moved her hand to touch it and groaned when a dull throbbing pain began to pulse beneath her fingertips.

"You're hurt," the voice said. "Try not to move too much. You may have fractured a rib or two."

Elyza groaned again, keeping her breathing more shallow. Absent-mindedly, she noticed that she was sitting on top of a very comfortable bed with impossibly soft blankets piled around her. She tried to take in the room, but as soon as her dry eyes landed on the girl sitting beside the bed, she couldn't look anywhere else.

Elyza's lips parted as she took in every detail of the girl beside her, from her light-brown hair cascading in waves over her shoulder to her royally delicate fingers that rested reassuringly on Elyza's forearm. She looked like the wildflowers that bloomed on the banks behind her childhood home during the first days of summer, with eyes like the forest and lips like sunshine, and the sight of her made Elyza feel as if her heart was full enough to burst. It was a feeling that she only ever dreamt about, but never truly felt. She recognized it now, though, in an oddly familiar way.

"How are you feeling?"

Elyza watched every movement of those full lips as the girl spoke. She swallowed roughly and tried to shake herself out of her daze. There was something about this girl that rattled her - that caught her off-guard and tore down her defenses.

She wanted to answer the girl, to tell her that her entire body hurt like hell, but that, when she looked into those familiar green eyes, the only thing that she felt was the overwhelming sensation of finally coming home after entire lifetimes spent lost and in the dark. She felt her heart expanding in her chest and the bones in her body turning into clouds beneath her skin. She was pretty sure she was floating. She forgot how to speak, but she thought that maybe that was for the best. She wasn't entirely sure that she could control the words that would fall out of her mouth if she answered the girl's question.

"Who?" She tried. Her voice was so hoarse, she barely recognized it. She coughed once and cleared her throat to try again, but the brunette beat her to it.

"I'm Alicia - Alicia Clark. I spotted you out in the ocean more than a mile off shore and my mom and her boyfriend, Travis, went out in the boat to get you. You almost drowned," the girl explained with concern etched between her brows.

The memories spilled back into Elyza and filled her mind like the ocean water that had flooded her lungs and nearly killed her.

"Where-"

"You're on our yacht," Alicia told her, cutting off her question so she didn't need to speak. "It's safe here, don't worry."

She was still leaning over the edge of the bed with one arm extended out in front of her, fingertips brushing Elyza's arm. She seemed to notice it a moment later though, and withdrew her hand as she moved to sit down on the bed next to the blonde. Elyza missed the feeling of the girl's touch as soon as her fingers left her skin.

"What's your name?" Alicia asked.

"Elyza," she rasped, voice still gravelly, but quickly recovering. "Thank's for saving me."

Elyza glanced down sheepishly before looking back up at the girl from under her lashes, forehead creasing with lines as she arched her brows and smirked.

"I'm definitely not use to playing the part of the damsel in distress," she told her, and then paused for a moment before adding, "though, it almost makes the whole nearly-drowning thing worth it when the knight in shining armor turns out to be a beautiful girl with a shining smile."

She was rewarded with a shining smile of her own as Alicia looked down shyly at her hands tangled in her lap.

"We couldn't leave you out there to drown," the brunette said, cheeks brushed lightly with the hint of a blush. She reached behind her then for the glass of water that was sitting on the bedside table and handed it to Elyza. "You should drink something."

"Thanks," Elyza said, accepting the water and immediately taking a sip. She drank the entire glass down in one go and came up gasping for air.

Alicia smirked at the sight of her and lifted her chin. The expression was so familiar to Elyza that it practically knocked her out again, taking her completely by surprise. Some part of her recognized this girl. She nearly said something, but thought better of it. She had already gone against her better judgement with that god-awful fairy-tale reference, and she knew that saying something like 'I'm pretty sure I've seen you in my dreams' sounded far too much like a ridiculous line Tom would've tried to use on her. So instead, she chose to simply smile back as she chuckled under her breath.

"I guess you were thirsty," Alicia teased. "Do you want some more? I can go get you another glass."

"No worries," Elyza said. "Just tell me where to go an I can get some myself."

Alicia grimaced lightly and said, "I don't think you're gonna be walking on that ankle any time soon."

"Oh shit, right," Elyza said, glancing down to where her ankle lay hidden beneath the blankets. "I forgot about that."

"I'll just run out to pour you another glass quickly, it's no problem. Be right back."

The brown-haired beauty was out the door before Elyza had the chance to say anything. Taking advantage of the moment to herself, though, she threw the covers back and inspected her ankle. It was swollen and painted with an angry purple and burgundy bruise with hints of blue around the edges. It looked awful.

In an effort to find out how bad it really was, Elyza attempted to move her foot in a circle. She clenched her jaw and grimaced as sharp, stabbing pains shot through her lower limb and a deep, relentless throb began to pound inside of it.

Tenderly, she reached down and probed at the sides of her lower leg, pressing down against both her tibia and fibula just a few centimeters above the point where the swelling stopped. It only caused her small amounts of discomfort. It was nothing compared to the pain she would have felt if either of the bones had been fractured.

The door swung open, pulling Elyza's focus away from her task as Alicia walked back into the room carrying two glasses of water, one in each hand. She closed the door behind her with her foot and smiled at the blonde.

"I got you an extra glass in case you're extra thirsty," she said, smiling at her. She looked down at the ankle that Elyza was inspecting and grimaced. "That looks even worse than it did a few hours ago when we brought you in here. How does it feel?"

"Not great," she responded. "I'm just checking now to see if it's broken."

She watched as Alicia walked over to the bedside table and placed the glasses down on its surface for her. She smiled at the brunette and thanked her before reaching down to further inspect her injury. She pressed her fingers into her fifth metatarsal and navicular bone respectively, gauging the levels of pain she felt at the pressure.

"Are you a doctor? Or a med student or something?" Alicia asked curiously.

"Not me, no. My mum is a trauma surgeon back in Melbourne though. I practically grew up in the hospital there, so I've managed to pick up a few things."

After a few more presses, she was convinced her ankle was sprained, not broken, and she silently thanked her mother for having so many medical books strewn around the house for Elyza to riffle through as a kid. She always enjoyed looking at the detailed drawings that lined the pages of the texts, often sketching near-perfect copies of them on blank pieces of paper whenever boredom took over and she couldn't think of anything specific that she wanted to draw. As a result, she had every aspect of the human anatomy committed to memory and could map it out without blinking an eye.

"Well it's not broken," she said, looking over at Alicia and smiling. "Just a sprain. Though I'm not sure how bad it is yet. Do you have any bandages or cloth that I can wrap this up in? And maybe some ice or frozen veggies I can put on it to help with the swelling?"

Alicia stood back up from the chair she had sat down in and turned her head around the room as if she might find something laying out in the open for the blonde to use.

"I'm actually not sure. I can go ask Victor though, it's his yacht. But you should know that as soon as I go find the adults, they're gonna know that you're awake and they'll want to come talk to you."

Elyza's stomach clenched at the unpleasant idea of facing judgment from the parental authorities so soon after waking up, and in a place that she was entirely unfamiliar with nonetheless. The nervous look that Alicia was giving her only added to her uneasiness, but she knew that she didn't have much of a choice.

"Bring on the Spanish Inquisition," she proclaimed sarcastically, earning another smile from the girl. Elyza rolled her eyes playfully before straightening her spine and preparing herself for the unavoidable interrogation to come.

* * *

 **A/N: I'm having a lot of fun writing this! I don't have any real plan or outline for where this story is going (I'm just kind of winging it) so if you have any ideas or suggestions, I'm all ears. Seriously, let me know. I hope you like this chapter and thanks for reading :)**


	3. Chapter 3

**Thanks for waiting for this one! I had a few exams and state championships last week, and I've been spending all my free time up on the mountain before the ski season ends. This chapter is a bit longer though, so hopefully that makes up for it :)**

 **Also, heads up because I'm about to get all kinds of deep and philosophical on you, so prepare yourself accordingly...**

* * *

 _Rain pattered down on the sidewalks outside of the old movie theater on Chapel Street. Heavy droplets fell from the metal awning overhead and rippled as they collided with the small pools of water below. People began spilling out of the theater doors and disappearing into the night, just as the overflowing puddles on the sidewalk spilled out onto the streets to be swept off by the current of the river making its way to the nearest storm drain._

 _Elyza reached out a hand from under the protection of her umbrella and smiled as droplets splashed against her open palm._

" _You've always loved the rain," Jake said, standing close by and watching his daughter catch the droplets. "You use to run around in it for hours when you were a toddler, laughing like a maniac."_

 _She turned and smiled at her dad who was holding a small umbrella of his own and laughing at the memory._

" _Yeah," she said softly, still smiling as she looked back at her outstretched hand. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. "It makes the city smell fresh and clean and alive. I love it."_

" _Hmm," Jake hummed in agreement as they began to walk out into the night in the direction of their favorite, late-night diner. "Thanks for coming out with me tonight. I've missed this."_

 _Elyza was in her junior year of high school, and it was starting to feel as if homework was taking over her life. She had always spent Wednesday nights with her dad for as long as she could remember, but recently, she'd had to ask him for a lot of rain checks._

" _Me too," she told him. "I'm glad it worked out. I love that movie,"_

 _With a deep breath, her mind shifted to thoughts of loves lost and forgotten, only to be found once more. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was one of her favorites. She had seen it so many times that she could recite nearly every line by heart. It spoke to her on a level so deep that she could barely comprehend it - a level within the foundation of her soul, at the core of her being. She had never truly loved or lost, but there had always been a part of her that felt empty, as if something had been ripped away from her, erased from her mind and heart. There was a part of her that ached for something without ever knowing what that something was._

" _What's on your mind, Kid?" Jake asked her, knowingly. He had always been able to read her face like an open book._

" _Do you think that some people are meant to find each other?" She asked him, still half-lost in thought._

" _What do you mean?" He questioned. "Like soulmates?"_

" _Ehh," she said, shaking her head. She didn't like that word. "'Soulmates' sounds so cliche, but yeah, I guess, kind of."_

 _She paused, losing herself in abstract thoughts that she couldn't put words to._

" _In the movie," she tried again, "the first time Joel and Clementine met and started a relationship, things didn't work out, but something brought them back together. They erased every memory they had of each other, but they met again and they were drawn together, and it was almost like their subconscious minds recognized each other. Do you think that kind of thing exists outside of the movies?"_

 _Elyza waited patiently as her dad thought about how to respond. She loved the way he did that. He always took her questions seriously, no matter how absurd they seemed to be on the surface. The streets that they walked through were deserted. Water seeped through the toes of her boots, soaking into her socks and making her feet feel heavy and waterlogged, but it didn't bother her much._

" _I think…" he said finally, speaking slowly, as if choosing his words with great care. "… that there are only a few things in this world that make sense. As a physicist, I know that there are four perceivable dimensions in which we make decisions and take action - the four dimensions in which we exist as human beings. Every action generates utility, or usefulness. Love, on the surface, is no different, providing social utility and fueling our natural instinct to reproduce, which, in turn, ensures the survival of our species. But love is much more involved than that - it goes much deeper. We don't cease to love someone when it's utility diminishes or disappears. Love is the one thing I can think of that surpasses its usefulness. We continue to love people despite being separated from them through distance or decades or death. It transcends time and space, and in doing so, it also transcends our ability to comprehend it. But if there's one thing that I know is true, it's that love is bigger than all of us."_

" _So… that's a yes, then?" She asked him, jokingly._

 _Jake laughed, his eyes crinkling at the sides with the strength of his smile._

" _Yeah, Kid, I guess that's a yes."_

 _Elyza hummed in response, trying to let his words sink in. He tended to lose her a bit when he got philosophical on her, but she thought she understood what he was saying. If love could exist beyond the constructs of time and space, then anything was possible. Maybe it could even surpass the bounds of a single lifetime. As she thought it through, the concept of soulmates began to seem less and less ridiculous to her._

 _Maybe the empty space she felt inside of her was the point by which she was tethered to another soul by the strength of a love that never died._

" _Meet me in Montauk," she whispered, not realizing she'd actually spoken the words aloud until her father turned his head to look at her._

" _I like the idea of that," she said, speaking up. "I really want to believe that if we love someone enough, no matter what happens, we'll always find them again."_

" _If there's anything worth having faith in," Jake told her, "that's it."_

 _Elyza suddenly felt the urge to hug her father, so she reached out and put her arm around his mid-section and squeezed him tightly, causing their umbrellas to bump together at their close proximity._

" _Thanks, Dad. You're the best."_

" _Love you too, Kid."_

 _They fell into a comfortable silence again as they splashed along the sidewalks. Elyza was pulled out of her reverie fairly quickly though, when she spotted the diner just up ahead._

" _God, I'm starving," she said, laying a hand over her grumbling stomach._

 _At the mention of food, Jake reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet._

" _Shoot," he said, rifling through it's leather folds. "I have to run over to the ATM quickly to pick up some cash."_

 _He gestured back towards the neon green ATM sign hanging over a building about a block back._

" _Why don't you go in and get us a table while I do that? Order a coffee for me?" He suggested. "I wont be long."_

 _Nodding, Elyza agreed and made her way to the diner._

 _Only a few minutes after seating herself in a corner booth, a waitress came over and asked her how her night was going. Just as she was placing her order for two coffees, her cell phone began to ring in her jacket pocket._

 _She apologized to the waitress, reaching for it quickly to silence it, but when she saw her mother's picture flashing on the screen, she excused herself, telling the waitress that she would take the call outside quickly and be back in just a minute or two._

 _She swiped quickly to answer her phone._

" _Hello?"_

" _Hi Honey, how's your night going? I hope I'm not interrupting anything." Her mothers voice ran out through the other end of the line, sounding cheerful._

" _No worries, Mum," Elyza said as she pushed through door and back out onto the street. "I just got to the diner and I'm waiting on dad to get here. He had to stop at an ATM quickly. What's up?"_

 _Elyza heard shouting in this distance, but she tried to ignore it as her mother spoke._

" _Oh, nothing really. I was just hoping I could convince you two to stop by a store on your way back to pick up some eggs. We're all out," she explained._

" _Oh yeah, no problem," Elyza told her. "Is there anything else you need while we're there?"_

" _No, just eggs," her mother said. "How was the movie?"_

 _The amount of commotion in the distance was getting louder, distracting her for a moment._

" _It was good, as always. It's nice to finally have a night with dad again. It's been a long-" Elyza's words were cut off and her heart froze in her chest as the deafening sound of a gunshot pierced through the damp night._

" _What was that noise?" Her mother asked. "Are you okay?"_

 _The question echoed somewhere in the corners of Elyza's mind, but she couldn't find the strength to answer. She felt paralyzed, fear and dread raking her body._

" _Elyza."_

 _Her mother's voice shook her out of her frozen state, like a shock to her heart, bringing her back to life._

 _Without answering her mother or ending the call, Elyza took off in the direction of the sound._

 _Water splashed around her as her feet pounded against the pavement. She was sure she was running faster than she had ever run in her life. Her lungs burned with her father's name, wanting so desperately to call out to him, but the logical side of her knew that if she did, it could pull the gunman's attention towards her, and she could easily put herself in unnecessary danger._

 _She willed herself forward, faster, and her legs felt almost as if they had disappeared beneath her, leaving her floating in the direction of the ATM she knew her father had gone to._

 _She screeched to a halt when she reached the neon green sign and quickly moved around the corner of the building._

 _The ATM came into view and Elyza's stomach bottomed out, her world shattering around her. Her father was sprawled out on the asphalt below the machine with a crimson river flowing ferociously from a gunshot wound in his abdomen, just below his ribcage._

" _Dad!" Elyza called out, lunging forward and immediately applying pressure to the wound in an effort to staunch the bleeding._

" _No, no, no, no, Dad," Elyza said, her voice pleading and desperate. "Hey, Dad, come on, open your eyes. Please."_

 _She could hear the sound of her mothers voice, muffled through the speaker of the phone, clearly calling out, desperate to know what was wrong._

" _Dad's been shot!" She yelled, knowing her mother was listening. "I need you to hang up and call the police right now! We're on the corner of McIlwrick and White! Hurry, Mum!"_

 _Glassy blue eyes identical to her own gazed up at her from behind fluttering eyelids._

" _Hey, Kiddo," he said with a cough._

" _Dad," she said, eyes filling with tears, "hey, you're okay. Just stay with me, okay? Please, just stay with me, Dad."_

" _Always," he promised, voice coming out as little more than a whisper. "I will always stay with you, Elyza. I love you."_

 _The knot in her throat strained and broke at his words, and she released a strangled sob._

" _I love you, Dad," she managed to choke out._

" _Love-" he stammered through his words, chest shaking in an effort to get them out. "Love is bigger… Don't forget… that. I love you…Elyza… Always."_

" _No Dad, please, no. Don't do this. Please just stay awake. Stay with me." She pleaded with him, feeling overwhelmed by her helplessness._

 _Blood bubbled in the back of his throat, but Elyza refused to let go of her hope, determined to keep him conscious and alive._

 _He choked and coughed, blood staining his lips, but somehow managed to speak once more. He looked into sparkling blue eyes that mirrored his own and held Elyza's gaze through sheer power of will._

" _May we meet again."_

 _The words tore at a place deep inside of Elyza's chest, filling her with a sense of loss greater than she had ever experienced - entire lifetimes worth of pain and longing._

 _Jake's chest stuttered lightly once more and then he went still beneath her outstretched arms._

" _No, no, Dad, wake up" Elyza pleaded as tears streamed down her cheeks. She pressed her ear flat against his chest and tried to make out a heart beat. Hearing nothing, she reached up to feel for a pulse on the side of his neck, and then on his wrist._

 _Nothing._

 _She looked into the faded blue eyes that had always been so bright and full of life, but now stared out into the space between them, unfocused and unseeing and empty._

" _No," Elyza cried, chest heaving as sobs began to rack her body. "No, Dad. Please, no."_

 _In the distance, sirens wailed as if to add to the laments of her own cries. She clung to the body beneath her with every ounce of strength she had left beneath her weather-drenched skin. Rain fell down around her, pulling crimson out from beneath them and dying the river red, seeping into the ground and leaving it forever stained, as if to mark the place where a love was lost._

* * *

Elyza didn't have to wait long before the door to the bedroom opened once more and Alicia walked in carrying a large bag of frozen peas. She smiled widely at the brunette, but it quickly faltered and fell as she watched a precession of people trail into the room behind her.

Elyza scanned the new faces in front of her. She felt the bed move next to her and knew that Alicia had taken up residence in her previous position on the edge of the mattress beside her. She studied the people standing in line like a firing squad at the foot of the bed. Their eyes raked over her, taking her in, making judgements and assumptions about her, just as she did the same to them.

"Here," Alicia's soft voice spoke off to her right. Elyza peeled her eyes away from the waiting interrogators and looked over to find the brunette holding out the bad of peas with a small, apologetic smile on her face.

"Thanks."

Elyza took the bag from her gratefully, throwing her a smile before reaching down and molding the bag around her swollen ankle. She breathed deeply as the ice seeped through her skin and cooled the muscles and tendons beneath.

"I apologize for not having any bandages to offer you," a deep, charismatic voice told her. Elyza glanced up to find that it had come from the tall, thin looking black man. He was dressed in an expensive-looking suit and everything from his posture to his tone gave Elyza the impression that he had just come down from some kind of fancy, end-of-the-world cocktail party. "I never thought I'd have much need for first aid supplies beyond the bare essentials out here, and the few bandages I did have are all being used by my other injured guest."

He reached up and placed a hand over his right collar bone.

"Gun shot wound to the shoulder, you see," he told her, almost conspiratorially.

Elyza grimaced in response, playing along with the friendly performance he seemed to be putting on for her. He made her slightly unease and very suspicious.

"No worries, I understand," she told him. "Gun shot wounds trump sprained ankles. I appreciate the bag of peas all the same."

She smiled and paused briefly before saying, "You must be Victor then. Alicia told me this is your yacht."

Elyza noticed the way the eyes of the woman standing next to him widened and whipped toward Alicia at the mention of their recent conversation. She assumed that meant the brunette had been told not to speak to her before this interrogation took place. A smirk played at the corner of Elyza's lips at the thought of the rule-breaking brunette sitting next to her.

"Yes, Victor Strand," the man introduced himself, reaching out an arm for Elyza to shake."And you are?"

"Elyza," she informed the room. "Thank you for going out of your way to save me. I owe you for that."

She turned her head to meet Alicia's eyes and watched as a smile spread across her full, beautiful lips. She gestured at the group of people then, and asked, "And who's everyone else?"

Alicia's eyes widened, realizing that nobody else had been introduced yet, and she quickly moved to correct that, pointing at each of them individually.

"This is my brother, Nick, and my mom, Madison. And this is her boyfriend, Travis, and his son, Chris," she explained. "Ofelia's in the other room resting. She's the one with the gun shot wound. Daniel, her dad, stayed behind to find antibiotics and medical supplies, but he'll most likely be back soon."

Nodding, Elyza met the eyes of each one of them in turn.

"We should be able to splint up that ankle for you as soon as he get's back," Madison spoke up, meeting her eyes and offering Elyza a smile. "You were in pretty rough shape when we found you."

"Would you mind telling us how you ended up so far out from shore with injuries like those?" Travis jumped in, obviously wanting to get down to business.

"Uh, yeah, sure," Elyza started. "A few days ago, soldiers raided the house that I'd been staying in. They killed one of my friends and wounded another before we managed to escape. As we ran away, I got separated from them. I spent two days on my own trying to find them, but I was out of luck. On the third day, I was down by the waterfront looking for signs of life when I heard someone crying inside the entrance of a building. When I walked in, I found a boy. His name was Adam. He was crouching over a woman who turned out to be his mum. She was sick - really sick - and she had a nasty bite mark just beneath the curve of her neck. I knew what that meant, and I knew what had to be done. I tried to convince the kid to go outside, but he wouldn't listen."

Elyza paused, trying hard to swallow down the aching knot that had built up in her throat. She closed her eyes, and the memory flashed behind her eyelids - the boy's pleading sobs, Elyza's whispered words, her fingers shaking over the trigger of a gun, the shattered scream, her tear-stained cheeks-

She cut off her thoughts sharply and inhaled through her teeth, trying to muster as much strength as she could to push it all down and out and _away_. She couldn't afford to let herself dwell on the past too much - not when it had the power to ruin her.

"I did what I had to do, and I pulled the boy out of the building with me when it was over. I knew the sound of the gun going off would attract the walkers, but I didn't expect there to be so many. The boy wouldn't stop screaming and trying to run back, and that just made more of them come. Pretty soon, a horde of thirty or so were on us. I did everything I could to fight them off. I emptied my gun into as many of them as I could and then went at them with a retractable baton I'd found on the body of a police officer the day before. If it had just been me, I could've handled it, but in the chaos that broke out, Adam tried to run back to the building and one of them got to him. There was nothing I could do, and by that point, we had attracted so many of them that I had to run. It was the only way I was going to survive. So I made a break for the shoreline. Some of them followed me, but most of them stayed behind, drawn towards the boy's screams. It wasn't long before the screaming stopped, though. I jumped over a rock bank and down onto the sand - that's how I twisted my ankle - and then I scrambled into the ocean, hoping that the breaking waves would keep them trapped on the beach. When that seemed to work, I spotted a black dot in the distance just off of the shore - I think it was this boat. The last thing I remember is trying to make my way over to it."

Elyza ended with a shrug. The eyes of the people in front of her were wide with disbelief.

"You survived for three days in the city on your own?" Travis asked, incredulous.

"No way," Nick spoke up in obvious disbelief. "That's not possible."

"I'm more than capable of taking care of myself," Elyza told him, shooting him a glare. She had made sure of that after what had happened to her father.

"You said that you'd been staying in a house, and that soldiers raided it?" Travis asked, curiously, and Elyza nodded.

"Yup," she said, popping the 'p' between her lip. "Turns out that when you need people the most, that's when they're most likely to turn on you."

Travis glanced around, looking over at his son uneasily before meeting Elyza's eyes again.

"Where was it?" He asked.

"The house?"

Travis nodded.

"It was on the side of a hill between Cal-State and some high school."

Chris' eyes doubled in size as he turned to look at his father and said, "that's were I saw the flashing light. Remember? You saw it, I showed you."

"Flashing light?" Elyza said, confused, but then it hit her, and her eyes grew to match the size of the kid's. "Wait, are you saying that…? Were _you guys_ the ones playing flashlight tag with Lindsey?"

"Lindsey?" Travis asked.

"Yeah, one of my people from the safe house. She kept stealing my flashlight to send morse code messages to some house in the distance. Are you saying that was you?"

"That was me," Chris nearly shouted in disbelief and excitement. "Wait, that was _morse code_?"

"Yeah," Elyza answered. "I kept telling her that no one knew how to bloody _read_ morse code, but she was hell-bent on trying anyway."

"Holy shit," Chris said, wearing such a perfect expression of someone who had just had their mind blown that Elyza couldn't help but laugh. She heard a chuckle next to her and glanced over to meet Alicia's bright green eyes, dancing with amusement. The sight caused Elyza's heart stuttered in her chest, and she reveled at the feeling, amazed at the way her body seemed to respond the girl.

"Holy shit is right," she agreed.

* * *

 _Floorboards creaked beneath her feet as Elyza tiptoed through the unfamiliar apartment. A body stirred in the bed behind her and she glanced back, relieved to find that the girl had only rolled over in her sleep. Her blonde hair cascaded over the pillow beside her and the bare skin of her back was illuminated in the soft glow of the street lights that streamed in through the adjacent window._

 _Elyza couldn't remember her name, but she was pretty sure it was something that started with a D… or maybe a J. Jennifer? Or maybe it was Jessica._

 _Either way, the girl was beautiful - stunning really - with legs that just kept going and a smile that brought butterflies to life inside of her stomach. Had she met the girl a few years ago, Elyza may have pursued something with her beyond the classic one night stand, but she had given up on relationships years ago. She could never find a feeling that she was capable of holding onto for longer than a few weeks at a time- a month or two at most - and she was now convinced that something inside of her was broken._

 _Satisfied that she hadn't woken the sleeping girl, Elyza scanned the floor for her shirt that had been thrown somewhere in their heated trip to the bedroom. She found it on the kitchen floor and smirked to herself as she remembered the way she had snuck up on the girl as she was pouring them both another glass of wine. She had pressed her body softly into the girl's back and trapped her between her arms as she reached for her own glass, turning to brush her lips against the exposed skin of the girl's neck after taking a sip. Things had escalated quickly after that, both wine glasses left forgotten on the countertop as they pulled at each others' clothes and stumbled toward the bedroom._

 _It was technically early morning now, just after three AM, but she considered any time between midnight and six to be the middle of the night. Her body ached in a pleasantly satisfying way, making her smile. She reached for a pen on the table by the door and scribbled out one of her classically charming notes to tell the girl how much fun she'd had and apologize for leaving so early._

 _Elyza hurried out the front door a moment later and down a flight of stairs leading to the exit of the apartment building. When she walked out into the crisp night air, she stopped for a moment and breathed deeply. It smelled like morning due and autumn leaves and winter on its way._

 _Her small, studio apartment was a little over three miles back towards campus and she walked the entire way, doing her best to enjoy every second of it. This was her favorite time to walk, with empty streets and starry skies and a town full of sleeping people tucked up under blankets behind closed doors._

 _When she was a kid, she had loved walking through busy streets with her father. They would walk hand in hand and she would stare up at the faces of strangers who would look back at her, and sometimes offer up a smile. She could always find the unmistakable vestiges of pride and confidence in those smiles._

 _Elyza remembered those days like a long-forgotten feeling of what could have been. Something had changed in the way people held themselves. There was something distinctly self-conscious and nervous about the way that people acted towards each other, as if they were fueled by fear instead of compassion or ambition. She would sit on a train and look from face to face, watching as people would catch her staring and quickly avert their eyes, shuffling their feet in discomfort. All she wanted was for someone to hold her gaze, to meet her eyes with a look of their own, to acknowledge her existence, to prove to her that she wasn't alone. She always felt so fucking alone._

 _Her mood fell significantly as she lost herself in thought, barely noticing what she was doing as she climbed the stairs to her apartment and unlocked the door to let herself inside. Closing the door behind her, she allowed herself to lean back against it heavily, her head falling back to rest against the solid wood._

 _Books on criminology were scattered across her desk in the corner of the room across from her unmade bed. Slowly, she moved toward it, feet dragging as exhaustion consumed her. It wasn't so much exhaustion, really. It was more like the physical response of her body to the resignation of all the expectations she'd had growing up about what it meant to be alive and human and_ good. _The world wasn't what she thought it would be. She slumped down in the chair by her desk and stared out the window in front of her._

 _It hit her like that sometimes - the empty feeling paired with a devastating kind of longing that she could never put words to. She usually felt it after waking up from dreams that filled her heart to capacity, only to rip it all away upon awakening. The dreams always faded quickly from her mind, leaving her only with an overwhelming sense of loss that tore through her chest and stung at her eyes. Other times, however, it took her by surprise, seemingly out of nowhere, and those were the times when it hit her the hardest._

 _She stared at the street light outside the window and tried to push down the feeling that stirred in her bones, just as she had so many times before. Silence filled the air around her and she knew she was the only one in her apartment, but it felt like she was only one left in this town, in this world. She couldn't help but succumb to the loneliness that engulfed her - a loneliness that stretched far beyond this moment, beyond the silence of the room and the streets below her and into other worlds and other lives._

 _She knew that there was something she was missing - some_ one _she was missing - a person she had never met, but who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion that she had never felt, but spent her life dreaming about. It ached in every cavity of her heart - in every corner of her mind and every blood cell in her veins._

 _She leaned down, resting her forehead in the palms of her hands as her elbows pressed into the desktop. She rubbed at her eyes and tried to physically wipe away the feeling. It was no use though. It lingered inside of every moment, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it. It was always there._

 _Always._

* * *

It seemed like hours had passed while Alicia sat on the side of the bed and listened to Elyza answer question after question that was thrown her way. The girl absolutely intrigued her, to say the least. She was so captivated by the blonde's stories that she hardly notice the way the sky was fading into a deeper blue as the dawn reached out to greet the day.

Elyza explained the events that led up to the plane crash, and how a man named Henry had helped her pull Tom out of the wreckage. Together, they had gone around trying to save as many people as they could. Apparently they had managed to get nine more people out to safety before Erica, a stubborn scientist with a 'massive god-complex' (Elyza's words), refused to leave without her metal carry-on briefcase. She climbed back into the wreckage and wasted far too many precious seconds retrieving the stupid thing, and by the time she had finally pulled it free, one of the turbines exploded. There was no one left to save after that.

According to Elyza, the house on the hill belonged to the scientist. The woman had invited them all to stay in her home until things quieted down in the world outside - an offer that redeemed the scientist quite a bit in Alicia's eyes. They had spent days fortifying the house, making it the safest place in the city to hide out from the walkers. Unfortunately, though, the reinforced doors didn't stand a chance against the military tank that came to tear it down. No one could have prepared for that.

Alicia was amazed at the amount of detail the blonde offered up. She wondered if it could have been a play on Elyza's part - if the girl was divulging so much of what she'd been through in an effort to gain their trust more quickly. If that was the case, Alicia couldn't help but to be impressed. It was a smart move, especially if Elyza was planning on going back into the city to look for her friends. She would most certainly need their help, even if only just to get her back to the shore.

By the time Elyza had finished telling them everything, Alicia's back was starting to ache from sitting in the same position for so long. She barely noticed though, as she had been entirely wrapped up in every word the blonde spoke. She'd completely lost herself in the sound of that beautifully accented voice. She could hardly believe the events that Elyza described. It sounded more like a story she'd pulled out of an old comic book than real-life events, but she did believe her, of course. It was the apocalypse, after all. All kinds of crazy shit was happening.

It was obvious that the blonde was wiped out from the days events, so when she saw Travis open his mouth to ask her yet another question, Alicia quickly jumped in an cut him off.

"We should take a break," she addressed the entire room while giving Travis a pointed look. "We can talk more tomorrow if you still have questions."

Elyza looked over at her gratefully.

"That's probably a good idea," her mother agreed. "Why don't you guys go back upstairs and get something to eat?"

"I'll go check to see if Daniel's sent us a signal yet," Victor offered before locking eyes with the girl next to her and flashing her a smile. "It's been a pleasure."

Victor moved towards the door then, filtering out of the room with Travis and the two boys.

"I'm gonna go check on Ofelia. Bring down some food for Elyza, okay?" Her mother said, and Alicia knew that it was less of a question and more of an instruction, so she just nodded curtly before the woman exited the room as well.

Alicia stood up and faced the injured girl that was taking up residence in her bed.

"Well that took forever," she said with a roll of her eyes. "How are you holding up?"

"Throat's a little dry, but I think I'll survive," Elyza quipped, and Alicia smiled at her.

"Hungry?"

"Starving, actually," she admitted, rubbing a hand over her stomach.

"Alright, I'll go grab us some food and bring it right back," Alicia told her, moving toward the door. She paused quickly before she stepped out though. "Is there anything else you need? A new bag of frozen peas, maybe?"

"Nah, I'm good, thanks though," Elyza said. "but if you wouldn't mind putting this one back in the freezer, that'd be great. It's thawed out quite a bit."

"Yeah, absolutely," the brunette said, catching the bag a second later when it was tossed to her.

"Be right back," she called out as she left the room.

She made her way upstairs and grabbed a few plates of leftover pasta. While the food was heating up in the microwave, she moved to the freezer to throw the peas back in and her eyes landed on something that made her smile deviously - a frosty glass bottle with a label that read _Belvedere Vodka._

She quickly grabbed it and shut the freezer door with a smack as she tried to hide the bottle along the inside of her arm. She glanced around nervously, turning her head from side to side to make sure no one was watching and then made a break for the microwave, quickly grabbing the food and disappearing down the stairs. She was beyond grateful no one had been paying any attention to her, because she was sure her movements and general body language had been far less stealthy than she had hoped.

When she was out of sight, she held the bottle up in front of her and inspected it. Vodka definitely wasn't her alcohol of choice, but it was bound to be fancy, so she could only hope that it tasted a bit better than most. The bottle had a fricken bow-tie around the handle for god's sake, because of course it did. This was Victor's yacht, after all. The world was ending and the man still went through the effort putting on a suit and tie. Obviously he would want his liquor to be dressed up as well.

She bumped through the bedroom door with her shoulder and closed it behind her with her foot. Looking over to Elyza, she held the bottle up in front of her for the blonde to see, a smirk playing at her lips.

"Something to drink?"

* * *

 **A/N: So what did you think? I'm pretty excited about the next chapter. I've already started writing it ;)**


	4. Chapter 4

There's something to be said about simple meals - the way that you can break them down into only a handful of components, allowing you to really appreciate how amazing something as elementary as bread or cheese or butter is - and Elyza thought she had never tasted anything quite as delicious as the leftover spaghetti that Alicia had brought down for her. To be fair, it also could've had something to do with the fact that she had barely eaten in the last few days and she felt like she was on the verge of starvation, but either way, it was perfection on a plate.

It took less than ten minutes before her plate sat empty, scraped clean, on the bedside table next to her and there was a pleasant ache of fullness in her stomach. Her head felt light and her body was buzzing, and she wasn't sure if it was from the alcohol or the beautiful girl sitting shoulder to shoulder with her on the bed. Probably both.

She took a sip from the bow-tied bottle and passed it over to the green-eyed girl.

"God, it's nice to have a proper meal," Elyza half-moaned, rubbing a hand over her stomach.

"And a proper drink," Alicia added, gladly accepting the bottle and taking a sip.

"Bloody oath."

Elyza felt the bed shift beside her and looked over to see Alicia reaching over toward her bedside table and pulling the drawer open. She reached inside and took out a cell phone with earbuds wrapped around it. Elyza watched curiously as Alicia unplugged the headphones and slid them off the device before throwing them back inside the drawer and shutting it.

"Get many phone calls these days?" Elyza asked sarcastically. The cellphone networks had failed a long time ago.

A hint of a smile played at Alicia's lips as she tapped away at her phone, and a moment later, music started streaming out of it, pouring in through Elyza's ears and splashing her brain with the vibrant colors of melodic notes.

Alicia's smile grew as she hummed with pleasure, closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wall behind her.

Elyza reached for the bottle, pulling it out of Alicia's hand, and took another swig before copying the girl and resting her head back, allowing herself to let her guard down and relax for the first time in days.

"Can I ask you something?" Alicia's voice broke through the rhythmical bass notes that thrummed through her body.

Elyza turned her head and quirked a brow at the brunette.

"I just spent hours being interrogated by a boat full of people and you still have questions for me?"

"You're right," Alicia said ruefully and looked away. "Forget it."

Elyza looked at the girl with her brow still quirked and frozen in place, unsure of what she really wanted in that moment. Her throat felt bone-dry from the hours spent answering questions, but Alicia's easy dismissal of the question had piqued the blonde's curiosity.

"I'll tell you what," Elyza said, and the brunette turned back to face her. "Let's dual it out. You win and I'll answer any question you have for me. I win and I get to ask _you_ a question for a change."

Alicia's eyes gleamed at the challenge.

"Sounds fair," she agreed, nodding. "What's the game?"

"How about hot hands?" Elyza suggested.

Alicia's lips pulled into a devilish smirk before she casually lifted her eyebrows, shrugged a shoulder and said, "Sure."

The girl's blasé attitude made Elyza narrow her eyes suspiciously, and she wondered if she should've chosen a different game - like thumb wars, or rock-paper-scissors - something that wasn't quite as dependent on reflexes.

She continued to eye the girl as Alicia moved and settled down in front of her with crossed legs. The brunette smiled innocently and held out her hands.

Slowly, Elyza reached out and hovered her own hands an inch or so above the girl's open palms. She could feel the warmth radiating off of the soft-looking skin and her fingers began to tingle. She locked onto shining green eyes and lost herself for a moment, lips parting on an inhale as every thought escaped her mind.

A zap of pain stung the back of Elyza's hands and broke her out of her reverie with a flinch and grimace that was quickly followed by a huff of frustration.

"Fair go, I wasn't ready," she said, and Alicia laughed.

"Are all Australians sore losers?"

"Only the best of us," Elyza told her, rubbing the back of her hand a bit before reaching over to grab the liquor bottle and taking another sip.

"We can turn this into a drinking game, if you're up for it," Alicia offered with a raised brow. "Drink if you get hit, or if you miss three times?"

"I like the way you think," Elyza agreed and offered up her hands.

"Wait, I still get to ask you a question," Alicia pointed out.

"Sorry babe, one question per round and you've already asked me if Australians are sore losers."

"What? That wasn't my question," Alicia said, looking incredulous.

"Better pick your words more carefully next time," Elyza told her with a smirk that grew into a smile as she watched the brunette glare at her.

"You play dirty," she said, reaching her hands out and placing them above the blonde's.

"That I do," she said with a gleam in her eye, and she watched as the brunette worked hard to shake off those words, trying to ready herself.

She held the girls eyes with her own and waited a moment before faking a swing with a quick jerk of her shoulder. Alicia moved her hands back quickly, and when she brought them forward a second later, Elyza quickly slapped the backs of her hands.

"Hey!" She exclaimed, caught off guard. Elyza only chuckled and smirked before handing the liquor bottle to the girl.

Alicia threw her a glare and took a sip from the bottle, and Elyza had to admit that she was impressed by the brunettes drinking abilities. The girl didn't hiss through her teeth or grimace at the taste of the alcohol. She didn't show any signs that she was drinking the hard stuff at all, and if Elyza hadn't sipped from the same bottle, she might have questioned whether it was really full of vodka. She looked like she could've been drinking water.

"Alright, ask your question," Alicia told her as she straightened her spine and lifted her chin.

Elyza smiled at the way the brunette was holding herself, her eyes scanning over the strong jaw line and stoic features. They may have been playing a round of hot hands, but the girl looked battle-ready.

"What?" Alicia asked when the blonde remained still with the hint of a smile her lips.

Elyza shrugged playfully. "I like the way you do that."

"Do what?"

"Posture up when you're faced with some kind of confrontation or challenge."

Alicia looked at her quizzically.

"I've already seen you do it a handful of times in the few hours since I woke up here. You shift into this commanding presence," Elyza mimicked the movement as she explained, straitening her spine and lifting her chin in a nearly perfect imitation of the brunette, "like you're demanding respect from the people around you, and also from yourself."

"Huh," Alicia said, relaxing her shoulders and furrowing her brow. "I didn't realize I did that."

Elyza shrugged and then chuckled at the girl's confused expression.

"Stop laughing at me," the brunette said, slapping at Elyza's uninjured knee.

"Hey, watch it," the blonde said, faking irritation. "The game's called hot hands, not hot legs. Though I can see that you're fully equipped to play both."

Elyza did nothing to hide her appreciative appraisal of the girl's legs before glancing back up and throwing her a playful wink. She may have been joking around, but she wasn't lying either. Every time the girl had walked in or out of the room, Elyza's eyes scanned down the girls body, taking in the expanse of those gorgeously long legs of hers.

"You ready for my question?" Elyza asked the smiling girl.

Alicia nodded and straightened up again, making Elyza's eyes shine with amusement.

"I just did it again, didn't I?"

"Yeah," Elyza laughed.

"Well I'm ready, so ask your question."

"Alright," Elyza paused for a moment, allowing herself a few seconds of consideration. As she looked into the forest-green eyes across from her, a thousand questions popped into her head, and she realized that she wanted to learn everything she could about the compassionate survivor that had saved her from the sea. She wanted to _know_ her, and that idea both excited and scared her.

"When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?" The question slipped past her lips before she realized what she was asking.

Alicia laughed, looking just as surprised by the question as Elyza was.

"Well, at first I wanted to be an eagle," she confessed, and Elyza swore she saw starlight in her smile. "I saw one when we were on a family vacation in Yellowstone National Park. It only flew over us for a few minutes before it disappeared, but I could've watched it for hours. It was incredible. I dressed up as an eagle for three halloweens after that."

Elyza smiled as the image of a little Alicia with black-feathered cardboard wings and a face full of paint flew through her head.

"Then I wanted to be a princess."

The blonde quirked a brow at that, amused by the dichotomy of the two images that played in her mind.

"Not like a disney princess though," Alicia quickly corrected. "Like Princess Diana - a princess that reached out to her people and made a difference."

Elyza's amusement turned to wonder as she listened to Alicia speak, her gaze dancing between the two green eyes in front of her.

"But the older I got, the less I knew what I wanted. When I got my acceptance letter from Berkley, I realized that I have no idea what I want anymore. Not that any of it matters now," she said with a sigh. "I just want to be an eagle again."

Elyza's heart was in her throat and she forced it back down with a smile.

"What made you want to be an eagle?" She asked. She was curious and wanted more than anything for the beautiful girl to keep speaking.

A smile graced Alicia's lips. "One question at a time. Those are the rules, right?"

Elyza threw her an exaggerated eye roll. "Oh come on, I've already answered a thousand questions and I haven't had the chance to ask any of my own. It's hardly fair. Cut me a break, yeah?"

"Fine," Alicia said, cheeks slightly flushed from the alcohol. She took a deep, exaggerated breath, as if she had to muster up the strength of the gods in order to produce another answer for the blonde.

"Why did I want to be an eagle?" She asked Elyza, repeating the question.

The blonde nodded eagerly.

"I just wanted to be free. That's all I've ever really wanted. After my dad left, everything changed - our family fell apart. Now my brother is a relapsing drug addict just like he was, and it's the only thing my mom pays attention to, and I just wanna get away from it - to be free of it. If I was an eagle, I could fend for myself. I wouldn't have to rely on anyone and I wouldn't have to wait for graduation to be gone. I could just fly away."

It was more than she deserved, Elyza thought. For all the answers she'd given and all the stories she'd told, she hadn't offered up anything even remotely close to what Alicia had just offered her - something deeper - something more meaningful and more difficult to give - something important and personal and true.

Alicia held the bottle to her lips and drank from it again, closing her eyes as she swallowed the liquid. Elyza watched the way her throat bobbed and her skin flushed just a little bit brighter. She could feel the heat burning inside of her own cheeks at the sight.

Without speaking, Alicia set the bottle down between her legs and held her hands out in front of her. Elyza mirrored her actions, holding the girl's eyes the entire time.

Before she knew what was happening, the backs of her hands were stinging with the pain of being slapped once more.

"Damn it," she swore, internally berating herself for getting so easily distracted by the girl in front of her.

Alicia laughed. "Why did you pick a game that you're not any good at?" She asked, sounding cheeky.

Elyza shot her an exaggerated scowl, making her laugh even harder.

"Is that your question, or-"

"No, no, no, that's not my question!" The brunette quickly jumped in, cutting her off. "That was obviously rhetorical, so it doesn't count."

Elyza smirked at the flustered brunette.

"Well what's your question then, little bird?" She asked.

Alicia took a moment to think before asking, "What made you decide to go to school in the states?"

Elyza blew out a deep breath of air from between her lips. It was a loaded question, but she figured she owed it to the girl after the answer she'd just received.

"My dad," the blonde explained. "He grew up in the capitol - went to uni there too. That's where he met my mum. He always told me about how much he loved it there - how much it meant to him - how much he wanted to take me there and show it to me."

Elyza's chest ached as she spoke, and she curled her hands into fists around her thumbs and squeezed in an effort to keep her emotions locked down.

"He was shot outside of a bank while he was at an ATM. By the time I got there, the gunman was gone. They never caught the guy who did it." She paused to collect herself, fighting against the knot she could feel building in her throat. "There were a lot of things I decided to do after that, and going to school just outside of DC was one of them. George Mason's one of the best criminology schools in the country, and I had my heart set on going to law school at Georgetown after that."

Elyza shrugged in an effort to lighten the weight of her words, more for herself than for the girl in front of her.

"I wanted to do everything I could to make sure nothing like that happened to anyone else - that no one else would lose their dad, or their best friend, or the person that meant the most to them. I almost joined the police force, but I couldn't do that to my mum. I would've been risking my life every day and I just couldn't do that to her."

Her eyes stung with unshed tears and she had to physically shake away the thoughts of her mother. She avoided those thoughts like the plague, because that's what they were to her. If she let them in, they would invade her mind and attack her body like a cancer, eating her alive - the dread and the fear and the pain and the loss - they would tighten around her throat and strangle her. So she hardened herself - she built a wall of steel around her heart, not to keep things out, but to hold things in. She kept a vice-like grip on her emotions, suppressing and containing them, trapping them, taming them, forcing them into submission. She had mastered the art of compartmentalization a long time ago, and the only time her strength ever wavered was when she had to speak the words out loud - when she was forced to bring them back to life with the power of her voice.

Her head was bowed down and she stared at her hands as they rested in fists on her lap, thumbs still aching inside of tight grips. She didn't know what else to say, but when she looked back up at the girl sitting across from her, she was met with sad green eyes that were full of recognition and understanding, and she realized that nothing else had to be said, because Alicia didn't just know, she _knew_. She understood her fear and her loss - her worry and her pain. Elyza could see herself in those eyes, and for the first time in a long time, she didn't feel alone.

Without a word, Alicia lifted the bottle of vodka from it's spot on her lap and held it out to the blonde. Elyza accepted it gratefully and took a long, deep sip. The alcohol burned down her throat, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. Her lungs burst into flames and she reveled in the feeling, letting it sear into her heart, soak into her blood, seep into her wounds and burn away the pain. She grounded herself in those sensations, focusing on them and allowing them to take over - to conquer her mind and wipe everything else out of existence.

Without warning, exhaustion fell onto her shoulders like a lead weight and pushed her body down into the mattress beneath her. She let herself fall back into the pillows behind her and released a deep breath, head tilting forward just a bit.

"You should rest," Alicia's spoke softly.

The bed shifted and she felt the pillows beside her compress beneath the brunette's weight. Elyza lifted her chin and turned toward the girl, taking in her concerned expression, and she wondered how something so bright could exist in a world that was so gray.

"Where were you when it started?" Elyza asked despite the aching tiredness in her bones.

Alicia dropped her eyes and a crease formed between her brows. Elyza knew it was a heavy question, and she watched as the girls lips parted and she blinked a few times in quick succession, seemingly lost for words.

"I… I don't know really. It happened so quickly," the brunette stumbled over her words as she spoke. "I was at school when a few of my friends showed me a video of a man being shot by the police. He just kept walking, like the bullets didn't effect him at all. I assumed it was fake. I mean, how could something like that be real? Nobody told us what was happening - nobody warned us - and then it was over before I even knew it started."

When green eyes looked her way, Elyza blinked once, slowly, purposefully, as if to say, without words, that she understood and was sorry.

"And then, just as we were about to get in the car and drive away, the military showed up and swept through every house on the street, killing all of the dead and the infected and marking all the houses as they went. It was creepy - like something straight out of Exodus."

The blonde gave a confused look at that, having no idea what Exodus was.

"You know, the Book of Exodus? From the Old Testament?" Alicia tried to clarify, but Elyza simply shook her head, still confused. "It's an old bible story about a Pharaoh who refused Moses, so the spirit of death swept through the streets of Egypt and spared only those who marked their homes with blood."

The brunette paused a moment, before waving a hand and saying, "It doesn't matter. Basically, the military came in, cleared out all of the dead and the dying, and built a giant fence around the area. They told us that we were the lucky ones - that everyone else was dead."

Elyza's eyes widened slightly at that, knowing just how untrue it was. She was about to say something, to curse the lying bastards, but Alicia spoke up again before she had the chance.

"We believed them because we didn't ever stop to wonder if we shouldn't. We sat around playing house for months, acting like everything was normal and the world outside of the fence hadn't fallen apart and died. It wasn't until they took Nick and Griselda - Ofelia's mom - that we started questioning whether the military was really there to help. They came into our house in the middle of the night and pointed riffles in our faces while they carried them out and took them away to a hospital for treatment. You wouldn't believe how pissed Daniel and Ofelia were."

She raised her eyebrows and forcefully blew out a lung-full of air at the memory.

"Ofelia brought one of the soldiers back to the house and Daniel tied him up and tortured him. The guy didn't last very long before he broke and told him that the military never planned on staying. They left a day later - literally took off in the middle of the night and abandoned us. Only a few of them stayed behind to carry out the 'humane termination' of everyone left inside the fence. We trusted them to protect us, and instead, they killed us all."

Elyza's blood turned to ice in her veins and her stomach twisted nauseatingly. She couldn't _believe_ that the military would implement a plan that included killing countless uninfected, unarmed, innocent civilians that they had sworn to protect. The idea was beyond unfathomable to her, and it left her utterly speechless.

"Maybe Susan was right. Maybe all of this is for the best." Alicia's voice was sullen and defeated.

"Susan?" Elyza asked. She hadn't heard the brunette mention anyone by that name.

"She was my neighbor. She use to babysit Nick and I when we were kids. She was like family."

Elyza noticed the way the girl spoke about her in the past tense and she knew what that must mean.

"Was she the first one you saw?"

Alicia nodded and then reached over for the bedside table. She pulled open the drawer and took out a folded piece of paper that she handed to the blonde without speaking another word.

Elyza opened it and found beautifully scrolled handwriting that read:

 _Patrick,_

 _If you find this, I am sorry. If you find this, I love you. I saw something today, something that horrified me. At first, I thought it was unnatural, I thought it was an aberration, but I was wrong. What I saw was prophesied. What I saw was Godly, and I think it's overdue. I wish you were here, but I will see you soon, and you will hold me._

 _If you find this, I am sorry. If you find this, I love you._

Elyza considered the words on the page - immersed herself in them and absorbed them. Though she wasn't at all religious, she could understand the premises behind the woman's faith. She had been raised by scientists who taught her the value of keeping an open mind - a scrupulous mind. They had passed down to her the conviction of truth, and she could see the truth in the words on the page.

She scanned the letter one more time and her heart ached for the girl beside her. With a furrowed brow, she lowered her eyes for a moment and then spoke in a voice just above a whisper.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she meant it.

The brunette nodded once, slowly, and took the letter from Elyza's outstretched hand.

"Me too," she said, voice equally as soft.

As the girl reached to place the letter back inside the drawer, Elyza's eyes fell upon the black ink that curled along the inside of her left wrist.

"May I?" Elyza asked, gesturing at it when the brunette turned back toward her.

Alicia did a quick double take, her eyes falling down to the tattoo on her wrist before shooting back up to the blonde in front of her.

"Oh, um, sure," she said, tentatively holding up her wrist for the girl.

Elyza reach for her hand and gently held it in front of her. Carefully, she explored it with her fingers, softly tracing them over the thin, black lines that curled into the shape of a wavering heart. She perused the delicate skin of the girl's forearm and felt goosebumps rise beneath her fingertips as she brushed over the beautiful canvas of skin.

"I noticed this earlier and I've been wanting to ask you about it," Elyza confessed, finally tearing her gaze away from the artwork to look up into green eyes - they were glistening like rain-splattered leaves. "It's gorgeous."

The rainforest eyes dropped back down to her wrist, and she shook her head slightly.

"You first. I just answered one of your questions," Alicia said, looking back up at the blonde after taking a moment to compose herself. "I saw the tattoo on the back of your neck when I was helping my mom get you into dry clothes."

Elyza watched as the girl next to her flushed slightly and scratched at the back of her neck, obviously embarrassed to admit she'd helped get the blonde out of her pants. She couldn't help the small smirk that pulled at the corner of her lips. She knew that someone must have redressed her, but she'd assumed it had only been the girl's mother. Honestly, she didn't care who saw her naked - she wasn't one for modesty - but she was pleasantly surprised to find out that Alicia had helped. She watched the flustered girl shift awkwardly on the bed next to her and found it nothing if not endearing.

"About that," Elyza said with a gleam in her eyes. She brushed her thumb over the soft skin of the wrist that she was still holding and watched as the girl squirmed a bit more. "Thanks for letting me borrow the clothes. I'm assuming they're yours?"

"Yeah, no problem," Alicia nodded, cheeks burning just a little brighter. Elyza squeezed her wrist gently before releasing it and reaching up to touch the tattoo on the back of her neck.

"So you're curious about my tattoo?"

The brunette nodded and smiled bashfully, making Elyza laugh softly under her breath.

"I got it after my dad died," she explained, twisting her body slightly and pulling her hair up so that Alicia could inspect the ink.

She felt the whisper of fingers like breath against the back of her neck, and it sent a shiver down her spine.

"You okay?" Alicia asked, fingers immediately retreating.

"Mm, yeah. I just have a sensitive neck," the blonde explained. "Go ahead, it's all right."

Cautious fingers returned and slowly danced below her hairline in a looping figure eight. She felt her stomach flip as goosebumps appeared on her legs, but she did her best to ignore it.

"I've always loved the infinity sign," Alicia confessed in a soft voice as her fingers continued to trace the pattern. "It always felt big to me, momentous even - like it held some kind of greater significance."

Elyza inhaled a little more sharply, surprised at the girl's whispered words, and she turned her head quickly to look at the girl. The delicate fingers migrated to the curve of her jaw line at the sudden movement and lingered there.

Slowly, the blonde nodded.

"Yeah," she agreed, turning her head away once more to let the girl continue her appraisal. "I know what you mean."

Fingers silently brushed over her skin for another moment before Alicia spoke again.

"These four dots in the corner," she began, fingers tapping over each one, "do they mean something?"

The blonde nodded, feeling the fingers slide up and down the back of her neck at the movement.

"My dad was a physicist, one of the top in his field, and he use to travel a lot to go speak at different schools and institutions all over the world. We had this thing - every time he would leave for a trip, the last thing he would say to me was 'Meet me in Montauk.' It's from our favorite movie, I don't know if you've seen-"

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," Alicia jumped in, cutting her off. "Yeah, I love that movie."

Elyza's eyes stung with tears and she forced herself to swallow despite the dryness in her throat.

"Yeah," Elyza chuckled hoarsely and smiled at the magnificence of the girl beside her. "He taught me that love is more important than anything - that it's bigger than everything. He explained to me that it's the only thing we're capable of perceiving that surpasses it's usefulness. There's nothing useful in loving someone who's dead, right? It doesn't serve any social purpose - but my dad is dead, and I love him. I'll always love him, and that's the proof of it. Love is bigger."

She took a breath and fought to harden her heart so that she could get the next few words out without cracking or breaking or falling to pieces.

" _May we meet again._ Those were the last words he said to me before he died. He taught me that love binds us together - that it's what brings us back to each other - and I believe him. I have to."

The fingers touching her neck splayed and she felt the warmth of the girl's palm cover the entire expanse of her tattoo. She lost herself in that touch - felt the compassion seep into her skin and comfort her. Elyza felt the steel walls of her heart begin to waver, and this time she let them. Her eyes swam with tears and she barely had enough strength to keep them at bay.

She took a deep breath and heard the way her lungs rattled in her chest.

"The four dots," she tried, wanting to finish answering Alicia's question, "they represent more than just one thing. They represent the four physical dimensions that we live in, and the four types of utility that we generate from every human act - they make up the four letters of my dad's name, Jake, and the four words in ' _Meet me in Montauk'_ and _'May we meet again.'_ \- and when you put all of it together, it represents love, and the promise of always."

Slowly, Elyza shifted back into her previous position on the bed. She felt the hand slide across her neck and then retreat as she moved, and she missed the contact as soon as it was gone.

When she lifted her chin, she was met with bright green eyes, glossy with tears. Elyza's heart clenched and strained against the knot in her throat, and she thought she might drown within the flooded forest of the girl's stare.

"It's beautiful," Alicia whispered, voice choked.

Elyza offered her a smile and then lowered her eyes, searching for the wrist that forever held the ink heart. She found it resting on the girl's lap and reached out to gently touch it. Alicia allowed her pull her hand into her own lap and let it rest there. The blonde didn't ask any more questions, she simply rested her palm above the heart on her wrist and held it, occasionally brushing her thumb across the smooth skin of the girl's forearm.

They stayed like that for ages, the game of hot hands long over and the bottle of vodka laying forgotten on the side of the bed. Music floated like autumn leaves around them and erased everything else out of existence. All that was left was this room on this boat with this incredible girl that somehow, against all odds, her heart seemed to recognize, and she could hear the echo of her father's voice like vibrations inside of her soul, reminding her that _love is bigger_.


	5. Chapter 5

**This took longer to publish than I wanted it to, thanks to finals, but the extra time did lead to some good storyline ideas for future chapters, so that's definitely a plus. I have a good amount of the next chapter written already, so you won't have to wait too long for that. Thanks for reading, and enjoy :)**

* * *

 _It was late in the evening and the world outside was quiet as the ten-year-old girl knelt on the sofa, knees sinking deep into the suede upholstery. She was facing the window that looked out onto the dark, empty street. It was that grim, lightless kind of night that came with the dawning of a new moon - the thick and foreboding kind of darkness that seemed to conceal an entire world full of ill-wishes and bad omens._

 _It had become a nightly routine of sorts, to anxiously sit and watch and wait, hoping upon hopes for the sharp rays of headlights to turn into the driveway and pervade the air in the dimly lit room around her._

" _Alicia, honey, are you hungry?" Her mother called from the kitchen. "You barely touched your dinner."_

" _No," she answered as she continued to scan the street outside._

 _She hadn't been hungry in days. Her appetite had stormed out of the house along with her father two weeks ago. All that was left now was the worry and fear that gnawed at the walls of her stomach and filled her up, leaving no room for anything else._

 _She heard footsteps approaching from behind her but didn't turn to see who it was._

" _Hey," Maddison said, gently placing a hand on her daughter's shoulder and falling onto the couch beside her. Her eyes were wide with concern and understanding. "You know what they say about a watched pot, don't you?"_

 _Alicia didn't answer, her eyes remaining focused on the night._

" _It never boils," her mom finished without prompting._

 _Alicia's shoulders slumped as the aching in her chest intensified. "He's never been gone this long before. What if he doesn't come back?"_

" _He'll be back soon," her brother insisted. "He always comes back."_

" _I'm worried he won't," she told him._

 _Nick was an optimist at heart. He was good at raising her spirits and was always there for her when things got rough; something that seemed to be happening more frequently in the past year or so. It wasn't the first time their father had taken off in the night after a heated argument - it had gradually become a regular thing as his drug use became more and more of an issue - but when he'd left before, he'd only ever been gone for a day or two - never longer than three, and certainly not for two weeks._

 _Alicia knew that something was different this time. She knew it from the moment he'd left. She knew by the way his boots slammed into the pavement of the driveway and the way his truck growled to life like a snarling beast. She knew by the way he had looked at her, tears pouring out of her shinning green eyes that were so much like his, and seemed only to see through her before walking past her and out the door._

" _How about something to take our minds off of it?" Maddie asked, her fabricated smile firmly in place as she slapped her hands down on her lap and stood up to move toward the game cupboard. "How 'bout Monopoly?"_

" _Dad says Monopoly is kindergarten capitalism," Nick proudly protested despite the fact that he couldn't even spell capitalism, let alone understand the metaphor. The smile that grew on his face gave away his excitement and Maddie chuckled._

" _That's right," she said with laughter in her voice. "Practice for world domination." She dropped the Monopoly box down onto the coffee table and called out, "I'm the top hat!"_

" _Car!" said Alicia, a smile finally touching her lips as she turned around on the couch and jumped onto the floor in front of the game board._

" _Shoe!" Her brother chimed in, flopping down on the floor next to her. He threw his arm around his little sister and squeezed her shoulder._

" _Don't worry, 'lisha," he told her, leaning in to whisper in her ear. "Mom and I are still here, and we stick together, always. Okay?"_

" _Okay," Alicia whispered, fingering the small metal car in her hands._

 _Maddie reached over with a smile and ruffled the boy's hair. "You're a good kid, Nick," she told him. "You both are."_

* * *

A loud thump had Alicia's eyes snapping open and blinking against the obtrusive light that filled the room around her. When her blurry eyes cleared, she scanned the area, looking for the source of the noise, but instead, her gaze landed on a mess of wavy blonde hair that tumbled down onto the pillow next to her. Her head was still light from the alcohol, so it took a moment for her mind to clear enough to remember the events of the previous evening.

The muted sound of music played from beneath her, muffled by the thick blankets that her phone had slipped beneath. They had both passed out with the lights on, lulled to sleep by the soft music and the comforting company and the weight of the alcohol on their eyelids.

Her wrist was still clasped delicately between Elyza's gentle hands and the sight of it pulled at a place deep inside her chest. The contact was comforting in a way that she hadn't expected or even imagined was possible in this new world. It was so innocent and reassuring and familiar, and it made her feel like she was a kid again - the way she use to feel back in middle school when she would have sleepovers with her best friend, Brit, and they would wake up in a tangle of limbs and soft smiles and friendly affection.

She missed those days. Brit had been more than just a friend to her. She was the closest thing Alicia had to a sister, and she loved her like family - she _was_ her family. No one had ever known her better than that fiery blonde with the wild heart that had flown off to a boarding school on the east coast the summer before their freshman year - not her mom or Nick or any of the friends she had made since then.

The girl laying next to her was a different story, though. She felt like something old and something new all wrapped up into one - something unknown, yet familiar - like exploring a new city and coming home at the same time. It had Alicia excited and curious and wary and hopeful, and it left her smiling until her cheeks hurt.

The hazy, pastel glow of early morning shone through the long stateroom window at the top of the oceanside wall, and footsteps were thumping heavily on the ceiling above her. Feeling too tired to sleep any longer, Alicia decided to go see who else was awake and making so much noise.

Very carefully, she slipped her wrist out from between Elyza's warm hands and moved from the bed. She reached back over toward the sleeping girl and gently pulled the big white comforter up and over her body before switching off the lights and slipping out of the room.

When she got upstairs, she found Nick in the dining room bent over a map that was spread out on the surface of the table.

"What's up, big brother?" She asked, pausing to watch him at the top of the staircase.

He looked over his shoulder at the sound of her voice. "Oh hey 'lisha," he said, leaning back over the map again. "What are you doing up?"

"Drank too much last night," she told him. "Woke up and couldn't get back to sleep."

"Oh yeah?" He said with a grin as he turned to face her, leaning his back against the table. "You got drunk with the new girl?"

"More like heavily buzzed," Alicia corrected him.

"How's she doing?" Nick asked, pushing his hands into his pockets. "She seems a little… intense."

"Yeah," Alicia said with a huff of a laugh. "No, she's good. We stayed up playing hot hands and fell asleep listening to music."

Nick grimaced playfully. "Really, Alicia? That's hardly fair. Everyone knows you're the queen of hot hands."

"Hey, she suggested it," she said, innocently holding up her hands.

"Sure she did." Nick threw her a disbelievingly look, and she rolled her eyes at him.

A moment passed before he asked, "You think she's safe?"

"I don't think she's dangerous, if that's what you mean," Alicia told him.

Without thinking, she rubbed a thumb over the tattoo on her wrist, remembering the way Elyza had traced it so delicately with her fingertips. She thought about the way the blonde had looked at her with a level of compassion and understanding that overwhelmed her, and the way the girl's eyes had become a brighter shade of blue when she talked about her dad and explained the tattoo on her neck.

"I trust her," Alicia confessed in a hushed voice. It took a minute for her to realize that her words had trailed off into silence as she lost herself in thoughts of the blonde. When she looked back up, she noticed the way Nick was watching her, his brow quirked in amused curiosity, and she felt her cheeks flood with heat.

Trying to play down the moment, Alicia shrugged a shoulder and walked over to the table that Nick was leaning against. She gestured with her chin toward the map splayed out on its surface and made an effort to appear as nonchalant as possible as she asked, "What's all this?" Her eyes scanned the curving lines and shapes. She may have been a straight-A student, but she was no girl scout. When it came to reading a map, she was completely lost.

"I found some nautical charts in a compartment up in the wheel house," Nick told her, unsurprised by the change of topic. "I almost tossed them aside before I noticed the markings that were drawn on it."

He pointed out a few penciled lines with tick marks through them as well as a small circled area.

"I saw Strand studying this the other day and didn't think anything of it," he said, "but I don't know."

"You think he's planning something?" asked Alicia.

"Maybe," Nick shrugged. "There's a chance that he's just looking for safe places to go to shore, but the markings look a lot like a charted coarse."

"To where?"

"North," Nick told her, pointing at the circle again. "There are markings drawn all up the coast, but this is the only piece of land that's circled, here, off the coast of Oregon."

Alicia furrowed her brow as she stared at the map. "Why Oregon? Why hasn't he said anything?"

"I don't know," Nick said, shrugging again, " but I plan on asking him when he wakes up."

Alicia turned away from the map and moved to sit on the bench next to the table. With her forehead creased, she leaned forward and rested her forearms on her knees.

"It might not be a bad idea," Nick mused. "Going North."

He walked over and sat down on the bench next to Alicia who gave him a questioning look. "This is our home, Nick. We can't just leave."

Her brother took a breath and leaned against the wooden backrest. "No, it's not," he told her bluntly, though his voice was gentle. "It's not our home anymore. Our house, our neighborhood, our city, it's all gone."

Alicia wanted to argue, wanted to protest, wanted to do anything other than admit that what he said was true, but she couldn't.

"Our home is with each other," Nick reminded her. "We stick together. Always."

Alicia leaned into her brother and let him wrap his arm around her shoulder. It had been their promise to each other since the day their dad left, and they never broke it. Even when Nick had been using, even when he had disappeared for weeks at a time, even when he was a living train wreck that couldn't get his shit together, he had always managed to be there for her when she needed him the most. So she nodded against his shoulder and felt the material of his shirt rub against her cheek.

"Always," she promised.

* * *

It was mid-morning when Alicia quietly cracked open the door to the stateroom and peeked inside to see if Elyza was still sleeping. The girl was sitting up in bed reading a book with her injured leg stretched out in front of her and propped up on a pillow. Her face was partially hidden by the messy blonde hair that tumbled down past her shoulders in tangled waves, and Alicia noticed the way it absorbed the sunlight that filtered in through the adjacent window and glowed a brighter shade of gold. The sight made Alicia's lips pull up into a smile that came so naturally, so easily, that it startled her.

Alicia caught the girl's attention when she pushed the door fully open and walked into the room with a sponge mop in one hand and a smile still on her face.

"You're up," she said cheerfully.

She didn't miss the way Elyza's eyes raked down her body in the same way that they always seemed to do when she entered the room. It was almost as if the girl was sizing her up, making comparisons or inspecting her. It didn't bother her so much - it was a common thing among high school girls and she had grown so use to it that she hardly noticed it anymore - but there was something different about the way Elyza looked at her. She became more aware of her own body and movements under the blonde's scrutiny, and it caused her to straighten her spine and stand a bit taller, as if the look was more of a challenge than an appraisal.

"I am." The blonde said as she turned her attention to the cleaning tool in her hand. Eyeing it curiously, she quirked a brow and asked, "Been swabbing the decks?"

Alicia laughed and explained how she had spent the morning scouring the yacht for something the blonde could use as a makeshift crutch. She then proceeded to flip the mop around in her hands so that the spongy head was facing the ceiling and slid it under her arm. She demonstrated it's effectiveness by taking a few steps and then offered it to Elyza.

She was rewarded with a laugh from the blonde along with an eye-crinkling smile, and she felt a sense of pride in her ability to elicit that kind of reaction from the girl.

Elyza eagerly agreed when Alicia suggested that they head up to the lower deck for some fresh air and food, and accepted the hand that was offered to help her stand.

"Wow," Elyza said as she fit the sponge head of the mop beneath the crest of her arm.

"I know," Alicia agreed. "It's surprisingly comfortable."

"I don't know why people use crutches at all when these things exist," the blonde quipped with a smirk before moving toward the door.

The trip to the main room was slow-going, mostly due to Elyza's stubborn insistence that she could get around just fine without any help. Alicia had respected the blonde's conviction, giving her space as they walked up the stairs, but she stayed close enough to jump in and catch the girl if she lost her balance or stumbled.

To her relief, they managed to make it upstairs without any trouble. The long, open space between the dining room and the main room was flooded with the sunlight that spilled in through the big, rectangular windows that lined the walls. Alicia watched the blonde take in her surroundings as they slowly made their way through the room, and she remembered what it had been like the first time she had walked through the multi-million dollar yacht. She had been astonished by the extravagant interior, with it's affluent expanse of mahogany that made up the walls and floorboards, and the modern furniture that accentuated the elegance of the room. She could see Strand in every detail of the design, from the ambience of the recessed lighting, to the sharp rectangular geometry that echoed throughout the space. As luxurious as it was, she didn't feel entirely comfortable on the boat. Every part of it was a reflection of it's owner and it served as a reminder that she was only a guest there.

As they neared the doors that led out to the lower deck, Alicia's eyes landed on a long-legged brunette already laying out in the sun with her head thrown back lazily and one arm cradled in a sling.

"Ofelia," Alicia said as she pushed the sliding door open, surprised to see the girl outside. She had spent most of her time on the boat below deck in her sleeping quarters, trying to recover. The brunette sat up at the sound of her name. "Hey, how are your feeling?" Alicia asked.

"Better now that I'm finally getting some fresh air." Ofelia smiled at them. She was wearing a pair of big-framed sunglasses and leaning against the back of the white sectional with her feet up on the padded seat in front of her.

"Tell me about it," Elyza agreed, hobbling over to the girl. "I was starting to go a little stir-crazy down there." When she reached the side of the table in the center of the booth, she leaned against it and reached a hand out to the other injured girl. "We haven't met yet. I'm Elyza."

Ofelia took her hand and shook it. "So I've been told," she said with a smile. "Chris filled me in on your story earlier this morning. Sounded pretty crazy."

"So my reputation precedes me." Elyza smirked. "That's convenient. At least I don't have to rehash all the gory details."

Alicia smiled at the girl's tone and noticed the smile that played on Ofelia's lips as well as the older girl ran a hand through her dark-brown hair, showing off her prominent cheekbones in the late-morning sunlight. To say she was an attractive girl was an understatement. Ofelia was beyond beautiful - the kind of girl you couldn't look away from - with those long, elegant legs and full lips and her perfectly sun-tanned skin.

Alicia followed Elyza as she slid into the booth and took up an identical position to Ofelia's. The blonde smiled at her then, and lifted her feet so that Alicia could scooch in closer to her before resting them on her lap.

"Is your dad back yet?" Alicia asked when they were situated, and Ofelia shook her head.

"Not yet."

Alicia raised a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the sun as she scanned the shoreline in the distance. It much too far off for anyone to properly see anything without binoculars, but she looked all the same.

"How long's he been gone for?" asked Elyza curiously.

"Not long. Few days, maybe," Ofelia told her, and her voice was surprisingly nonchalant. Regardless, Alicia still felt the need to reassure the girl.

"Don't worry," she tried, "I'm sure he'll be back soon."

"I'm not worried," Ofelia said, and Alicia could hear the bitterness lacing her tone. Elyza seemed to notice it too and glanced over at the other injured girl with a crease between her brows.

A full moment passed in a tense kind of silence before Alicia spoke up again. "Your still upset about what happened with Andrew." It wasn't a question so much as a statement. Alicia could see it written all over the older girl's face despite the sunglasses hiding her eyes.

"Andrew?" Elyza asked, not quite following.

"The man I was seeing until my father decided to torture him," Ofelia told her with the edge of resentment in her voice. Elyza looked back over to Alicia with a mixture of concern and confusion.

"The soldier that I told you about," Alicia explained.

"Coincidentally, he was also the one who shot me," Ofelia added with derision.

"Oh," Elyza said, her eyes widening slightly in surprise. "Wow."

"Yeah." Ofelia gave a sarcastic laugh.

Alicia swore she could hear thorns in the girl's laughter before the sound drifted off and died in the ocean breeze. It was obvious that Ofelia needed to talk about what had happened with her father, but she didn't want to push the girl. She sensed that she would speak up again soon if she was given enough time, and Elyza seemed to be getting the same vibe, so they both waited patiently for Ofelia to decide on her words.

"You know," she began on an exhale a few minutes later, "I was only a kid when I first asked my dad about the war - I couldn't have been more than ten years old - and I still remember the way he sat me down and answered every single one of my questions. He told me all about the violence and the blood shed and the suffering. He even told me about the torture. He told me _everything_ , in detail."

She let her head fell back on her shoulders, allowing the sun to spill over her face. Alicia might have thought the girl looked relaxed if she hadn't noticed the muscle straining against the brunette's jawline.

"But now that I think about it," Ofelia continued, taking a breath in an effort to release some of the tension from her voice, "he never told me anything about himself, about what _he_ did. He let me believe that he was one of the victims, one of the men who had been cut up and tortured, when really, he was the one holding the blade."

Another few moments passed in relative silence, the noises of the ocean filling in the spaces between words, and Alicia let them all sink in. She thought about the things she had learned about war - the things she had read in novels and history books. At the time, such things had only been real to her within the pages of those books - war itself was still incomprehensible to her - but her perspective had changed since then. The world had fallen apart - people were terrified and dying and fighting for their lives- and she wondered if there was much of a difference between surviving a war and surviving in this world.

"That must have been hard," Elyza said in a gentle voice, "finding out about his past in the way that you did."

Ofelia tilted her chin back down and nodded as she took another deep breath. "I spent my entire life watching over my parents, making sure they were okay and doing everything I could to help them out around the house and in the shop. I sacrificed a _lot,_ " she told them, and then she shook her head. _"_ Turns out they didn't need as much watching over as I thought."

"You know," Alicia said, "since we've met, everything your dad has done, he's done for _you_. To keep you safe. To protect you."

"He's been lying to me my entire life," Ofelia argued. "Lying doesn't protect anybody."

"You're right," Elyza said, jumping in, "lying doesn't protect anybody, but from the way it sounds, he never lied to you. At least not about that. He kept his past a secret. Secrets and lies are two very different things."

Alicia could practically feel Ofelia's eyes boring into the blonde from behind her blacked-out sunglasses as the tension around them rose.

"Look," Elyza continued, trying to sound conciliatory. "I'm not saying that what he did was okay, but I think I understand why he kept that from you. He was fighting a war, fighting for his life and the lives of his people, and he did what he had to do - what he was _ordered_ to do. He probably just didn't want his past to change the way his ten-year-old daughter felt about him. He didn't want you to look at him and see a man who tortured people."

Ofelia looked away from the blonde and Alicia noticed the way her shoulders seemed to relax a bit while she absorbed what Elyza was saying.

"I know you might think that he's not the man you thought he was, but he hasn't changed. The only thing that's changed is your perception of him. You know your father; he raised you. You know the kind of man he is. His past doesn't change that," Elyza explained. "Everyone's done things that they aren't proud of, but one decision, one mistake, one accident, doesn't define a person."

Alicia's eyes stayed on the blonde even after Elyza had finished speaking. She brushed a thumb over the exposed skin of Elyza's uninjured ankle as she soaked in the things the blonde had said. She found it hard to believe that this girl, this stranger, could walk into their lives and form such a complete picture of their motives and desires in such a short amount of time, but she had. Alicia could hear the truth in her words as she spoke them, and it startled her just as much as it amazed her.

Elyza looked over, met her eyes and held them there. The sun beat down around them and Alicia could feel the heat of it beneath her skin, inside her veins. Ofelia was slumped more heavily in her seat, seemingly lost in thought, and it was clear that Elyza was unsure of what to say. Alicia figured that Ofelia would need a little while to process the blonde's insights about her father, so she smiled at Elyza and gave her uninjured leg a reassuring squeeze before shifting the topic of conversation to something a little more mild.

"How's your shoulder feeling?" She asked, pulling Ofelia's attention toward her.

The brunette shrugged her uninjured shoulder. "Not great, but I'm managing."

"At least we have some antibiotics and pain meds on the way," Alicia tried to assure her.

"That's true," she said as she shifted her her seat in an effort to sit up straighter. Her injured shoulder moved a fraction of an inch as she adjusted and it caused her to grimace. "Pain meds sound pretty good right now. I swear my shoulder hurts more than it did a few days ago."

Alicia watched the way Elyza's brows scrunched together in concern. "It might already be infected," the blonde said worriedly. "Has it been cleaned?"

"Yeah," Ofelia answered with a nod. "My father took care of that before he left, but we didn't have enough supplies to clean it properly."

The crease between Elyza's brow deepened. "Have you noticed any drainage?" She asked.

"A little, yeah," Ofelia told her, "but I thought that was normal."

"It can be," Elyza told her. "What color is the fluid?"

"It's a cloudy, yellow-white color most of the time."

"What about the area around it? Does it look any more red or swollen than it did a few days ago?"

"Maybe a little," said Ofelia uncertainly. "Are you some kind of doctor or something?"

"No," Elyza said with a slight shake of her head, "but my mom was a surgeon and I picked up some things from her along the way. If you want, I can look at it. See if there's anything I can do that might hold off the infection for a little while longer."

"Yeah, okay," Ofelia agreed, and she slowly moved across the seat toward the blonde. Alicia was relieved to see that there was no tension between the two injured girls, and she watched as they worked together to slide Ofelia's shirt to the side and peel off the bandage covering her shoulder.

When the wound was made visible, Alicia couldn't stop herself from grimacing at the sight of it. The hole in her flesh was slick with fluid and circled by an angry red ring. As much as she wanted to look away from it, she forced herself to watch as Elyza inspected the wound, gently touching the areas around it and measuring the amount of discomfort it seemed to cause the older girl. When the blonde touched an area that seemed to be particularly sensitive, Ofelia let out a small groan and clamped her eyes shut.

Though it was nearly imperceptible, she noticed Elyza wince as well. It wasn't until the blonde turned her attention toward her outstretched legs that Alicia realized she had unknowingly gripped the girl's swollen ankle.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry," she said, quickly retracting her hand. "I didn't realize I was doing that."

Elyza huffed out a laugh through her grimace before looking up and throwing Alicia a quick half-smile. "Don't worry, babe, you're fine."

Alicia turned her head slightly to hide the flush she felt growing in her cheeks at the blonde's words. That was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that she had been called 'babe' and she couldn't help but wonder if everyone in Australia used the term of endearment so casually.

Elyza smirked once more before turning back to Ofelia and tentatively reaching up and laying a hand atop the girl's forehead.

"You're warm," she said, the furrow in her brow firmly back in place. "There's a good chance you have a fever."

"I figured as much," Ofelia admitted. "My head's been feeling heavy and full since I woke up a few hours ago."

"What does that mean?" Alicia asked, anxiety boiling up inside her throat. "Will she be ok?"

"Well, I can definitely see the start of an infection, but it's nothing we can't handle. I'm going to need to clean this, though," she told both of them honestly, and then she turned toward Alicia and asked, "Do you have any more clean bandages?"

"I think so," she answered. "I'll go check."

"I'm also going to need some kind of washcloth or towel and some water," she told her.

"I'm on it," Alicia said.

Carefully, she lifted Elyza's feet so that she could slide out from under them and hurried back into the main room.

After finding everything she needed, she rushed back out to find her brother sitting next to Ofelia in the booth. He must have come down from the wheelhouse where he'd been talking to Strand. He was currently in the middle of helping the injured brunette out of her shirt when she walked over and set the supplies down on the table - a small hand towel, a plastic bottle of water, and a clean bandage and tape.

"Thanks," Elyza said, reaching for the towel and water. Alicia nodded and sat back down next to the blonde.

She watched as Elyza poured some of the water from the bottle onto the towel and began to wipe at the infected wound. Ofelia clenched her jaw and groaned.

"Here, squeeze my hand," Nick told her, offering his hand to the girl. She took it without a second thought and gripped it so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Alicia didn't miss the furrow in Nick's brow as his hand was practically crushed in the girl's grasp and he had to fight to keep from wincing.

"Almost done," Elyza said, scrubbing at the infected area.

She grabbed the bottle of water and poured it over the wound, catching the liquid in the towel that she pressed a few inches beneath it. She bit her lip as she dabbed at Ofelia's skin to dry the remaining wetness.

"Hard part over," she told Ofelia, smiling comfortingly at the girl. "Just have to get this bandage on and you'll be set."

She taped the bandage in place easily and then rubbed down the girls arm. "Done."

"Oh thank god," Nick said as his hand was released and he shook it out in front of him. "You're stronger than you look."

Elyza laughed lightly and Alicia smiled, once again finding herself both amazed and more than a little impressed with the blonde in the booth next to her.

"Thank you," Ofelia said to Elyza, chuckling under her breath at Nick's antics.

"Any time," Elyza told her with a smile.

A soft ocean breeze blew through their hair and Ofelia shivered despite the heat of the summer day.

"How 'bout we get you back inside so that you can rest?" Elyza suggested and looked to Nick.

"That sound like a good idea," he said, taking the queue. "I'll go with you."

Alicia went with them, returning what was left of the medical tape to it's proper place, depositing the dirty towel in the laundry, and throwing away the old bandage. When she returned to the lower deck, she found Elyza turning the pages of the same paperback book she had been reading this morning. As she approached, she caught a glimpse of the title and saw that it was The Giver.

"That's one of my favorites," Alicia said, gesturing toward the book.

Elyza looked up with a smile. "Yeah?"

Alicia nodded and smiled back at the girl as she slid into the booth. Elyza set the book down on the table next to her and lifted her feet again so that she could take up the same position she'd been in earlier.

"Yeah," she said as feet fell into her lap. "I've read it at least twelve times and it never gets old," she confessed, reaching for the book and riffling through the pages. "The copy in my room back home is so worn out that it's practically falling apart."

The pages fluttered in Alicia's hands and formed a breeze that ghosted against her cheeks. She inhaled the sweet scent of the book's pages and could taste it's vaguely vanilla aroma on the tip of her tongue.

"I saw you reading it when I woke up yesterday. I've heard it's a good book, but I've never read it," Elyza admitted. "It's been a long time since I've read anything other than textbooks. I never had much time for anything else."

"Well, we have nothing but time now," Alicia assured her, and Elyza gave her a small smile.

"I guess we do," she said. "Gotta find our silver linings somewhere."

Alicia hummed in agreement and let the sounds of the sea take over for a moment before resting her hands on the feet in her lap with the book still in hand and saying, "Thank you, by the way."

"For what?" asked Elyza.

"For what you did for Ofelia," she said. "You helped her in more ways than one."

"Well, it was the least I could do," the blonde said, looking out at the water. "I owe everyone here a life-debt after all."

Alicia frowned slightly at her words and watched the girl who was watching the waves. "I don't think that's why you did it."

Elyza met her eyes and stoically held them for a moment before breaking into a small smile. "No? Why do you say that?" she asked.

"You know the saying 'it's a dog-eat-dog world'?" Alicia asked.

"Sure." The blonde nodded.

"That's never been more true than it is now," Alicia explained. "I haven't had to do the same things that you've had to do to survive, but I've seen a lot. I've seen the way this world has changed people. Nobody owes anything to anyone anymore, and that's the mentality now - every man for himself - but you're different."

Alicia paused and looked away, considering her words. She could feel Elyza's eyes on her and heard the smile in the girl's voice when she asked, "How am I different?"

"Look," she said, trying to sound reasonable, "I know you're probably thinking that I don't know you very well yet, and maybe that's true, but I can tell you're not like everyone else. I think that you do things for other people because you _want_ to help them, not because you feel obligated to."

Elyza sighed and looked back out at the ocean again. "You're wrong," she said, and Alicia felt her stomach drop in disappointment, but then the blonde turned back to her with eyes bluer than the water beneath them, and said, "I think that you already know me better than anyone has in a long time."

Alicia felt the smile tugging at her lips as she watched the girl watching her.

"You want to read that with me?" Elyza asked, gesturing toward the book that was still in her hands. "We can take turns reading out loud."

Alicia glanced down at the book that had, for so long, been her favorite, and by the time she looked back up at Elyza, the smile had fully spread across her face. "Definitely."

* * *

 **What did you think? I love reading reviews, so please write one if you can. The feedback is really helpful and it's a huge motivator as well! Thanks again for reading :)**


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